The BIG baby shower post

Oh my word, this is a lot of photos. 

But I just had so much fun I wanted to share every detail with you!

My SIL Christie asked a few months ago if I would help her plan a shower for our friend who is expecting her first little one in August. Once the big ultrasound revealed a sweet baby girl, we got to planning. 

Momma-to-be likes purple, so we instantly decided to go with varying shades- eggplant to orchid to lavender. I had a few theme ideas but we decided to go with 'dresses'.... what could be more girly?

So here is the day, in photos. First of all, praise the Lord for the fabulous weather that day! Bright sunshine, warm, just a light breeze. Perfect.

This is the gift table, before most guests arrived. It ended up very full!! Baby Skylar is loved and blessed already!

We knew right away we wanted to decorate with actual dresses, and my mom found this gorgeous skirt that demanded a prominent location. 

These are some of the prize bags I decorated, because what's a shower without games? And what are games without great prizes in pretty little bags?!

Christie and I had great fun on baking day, making the hydrangea cupcakes above, and of course- purple cake pops! On a side note, I've started using my stand mixer to crumble the cake and mix in the frosting when I make cake pops, and man do they get smooth and lovely! It really helps!

These were devil's food cake with chocolate fudge frosting, coated in vanilla candy melts with purple sugar sprinkles. They tasted like fudge-y brownies. Mmmm.

Here is the food table, complete with Skylar banner. It's a bit hard to see, but its held together with tiny wooden clothespins. 

Some closeups of the cupcakes- We jazzed up lemon mix with sour cream and pudding... then topped them with vanilla raspberry frosting. A funny little story: We filled one with extra frosting as a game; whoever gets the filled cupcake gets a prize. A nice, girly prize. Well, no one found the winning cupcake. Until after the shower was over and my aunt called to say the leftover cupcake she brought home for her hubby just happened to be the winner. So, Uncle Aaron, we have some nice vanilla body spray with your name on it. 

Frosting these was so easy! I was surprised. Saw them originally on Pinterest, and found the corresponding blog that posted them, along with a tutorial- which of course I can't find now. 

I decorated a glittery wooden 'S' that we sent home for Skylar's nursery. And the pic above is a bit washed out, but Christie and I folded the napkins into little dresses with bows. 

Creamy pasta salad cups- because cupcakes and champagne floats aren't always enough.

I had a lot of fun making these little dress cupcake toppers. Cardstock, tulle, ribbon and lots of hot glue. Fun stuff. 

I love individual portions of food in little cups. 

And something about these sweet/salty dipped pretzels just gets me. Plus they are pretty and easy to make. 

The non-alcoholic drinks. For the poor preggo. ;) I somehow forgot to snap a pic of the champagne float, but it was nummy. Champagne with lots of melty, cold tropical sherbet. Kinda wish I had one right now...

I also love indoor furniture brought outdoors. And pregnant mamas need comfy chairs with ottomans. Decorated with tulle.

My sweet friend, who has two beautiful girls, lent me these tiny dresses she had saved. Well, four of them are hers, the others were gifts for baby Skylar. 

I had tons of fun sewing two of these dresses. The second and fourth from the left- I forgot to take closeups of them.

Here are the tissue pom poms Christie and I made- I'll be posting a tutorial for these in the next couple days. They are surprisingly easy to make, and would be perfect for a wedding! Or mini ones for a baby mobile! I sent these home for Skylar's nursery as well. 

Thank you so much to my mom and dad, for letting us take over your gorgeous house for the day and all help with this event. To Christie for letting me help plan and for all your hard work! And to Jessica and Jenna, for the ideas and setup help...

Also to Stacey- thanks for having a girl! I got to immerse myself in ruffles and ribbon and tulle and dresses. Congrats on baby and thanks for letting me be a part of this day!

To my fab hubby who had kid duty all day Saturday- thanks babe. Love ya. 

Check back soon for a fun pom pom tutorial!

The big Wonka day

Today we celebrated Ty's birthday with 12 of his friends. At our house. It was chaos!

But so fun! And the Willy Wonka theme was a blast to plan around. We had more ideas than we had time or resources. You could really run wild with this party theme. We kept it fairly simple, since it was for a group of 4 and 5 year olds, many of whom hadn't seen the movie. 

It all started with the candy bar invitations, complete with golden tickets.

I am realizing as I post this that I'm missing tons of photos. We just got busy with the party and forgot to get pics of so many elements.  But this is the Wonka Wash (hsaw aknow, for those who know the movie... we just thought that might be confusing). The guests walked through as they entered the party.

And the contract signed by the kids in the movie as they entered the chocolate factory. Mike customized ours with each guest's name. He used the wording from the movie, but needed to fill more space.... so at the very bottom in the tiny, unreadable print is the Declaration of Independence, along with some lyrics from 'Baby got Back', by Sir Mixalot. A little throwback to our jr high years, apparently. 

Here's one angle of the dessert table. A cake pop (of course) "river", with my attempt at a fondant cake in the background.

I used my new Cricut Cake to cut the 'W' and all the little circles on the cake. The top is supposed to be Willy Wonka's hat. Hmph. Good thing I signed up for my first cake decorating class next month! Super excited about that.

I really did have a ton of fun decorating this cake. Fondant is tricky! But super fun! I can't wait to play more. 

I'm sad that I don't have pics of the rest of the dessert table. We borrowed a chocolate fountain from a friend and I made bouquets of treats to dip. Doughnut holes, strawberries, marshmallows, then plates of mini oreos and nutter butters (mmmm), bananas and pretzels. It was yummy and super festive! Very wonka.

Yep. Here's my dorky painting of an oompa loompa. And oh, that blasted song! I can't even think the words 'oompa loompa' without it getting stuck in my head.

oompa, loompa, doopity do...

I've got another 

puzzle for you....

Aaarrghh!

Please excuse the chocolate all over my son's face. It was a wonka party after all.

I managed to snap photos of most of the kids as oompas, which I plan to print and send along with the thank-you notes. They were hysterical.

I can't believe that's all the photos!

We played the ole "pop a ballon to get the prize inside" game... but used gold balloons in the shape of a 'W'. Also did a 'golden egg hunt', but each egg was labeled with each child's name to be sure everyone got one.

And this idea I loved... I read it somewhere... 

I got 12 boxes of Everlasting Gobstoppers and wrote each guest's name on one, then placed them all in a bowl near the gift table. At gift time, Ty pulled a box from the bowl, read the name, and traded the gobstoppers for the gift from that particular child. This cut down a bit on the frantic "open mine next!!", which gets confusing and frustrating for the birthday kid.

We also made candy necklaces with fruit loops and plastic cords... but again, no photos. :(

Oh, and my husband printed coloring pages with scenes from the movie and we set up a coloring station in Ty's playroom for something to do as guests arrived.

It really ended up being a fun day! Ty had a ball and loved all the wonka stuff... and especially having all his friends to his house to play. Something about that just thrills kids. And wears out parents. :)

Check back in the next day or two... I've finally taken some pics of Ty's room makeover that we did for his birthday surprise and I'll be posting!

A very Wonka birthday

This weekend is Ty's birthday party with all his friends. We've been discussing it for months- it's necessary to plan ahead since his birthday falls three weeks after Christmas and neither of us have a creative bone left in our bodies. 

Ty himself came up with the idea for a Willy Wonka theme. He loves the movie. Both movies, really. I prefer the original. Mike wanted to make candy bar invitations with a "real" golden ticket inside, so this post is all his creative genius. I had nothing to do with it. Except cutting the edges of the tickets with my decorative scissors. 

He designed and printed "Tilden bar" labels in Wonka font on nice, thick paper. We had a tough time finding chocolate bars that are still wrapped this way, with the foil and separate paper wrapper. These are king size Hershey bars. 

The golden tickets are tucked inside the foil and printed on shimmery gold paper. Mike wanted to use gold foil. He likes everything to be authentic. But I love the way they turned out. 

He used the exact wording from the movie, and added Ty's "signature" to the bottom. 

Ty was insanely excited about these bars. Mike made him his very own and it just thrills him. He can hardly wait for his party. I'm so lucky to have such a creative husband!

We have some super fun things planned, and I have lots of baking and creating to do this week. I just love doing birthday parties for the boys! I'm excited to share it all with you! 

Leave a comment if you have any great Wonka party ideas! I'd love any suggestions!

Cake Pops!

Here is a disclaimer before I post these:

Many, many bloggers have posted cake pops before me, and probably all are better than mine. As far as I know, the original, inventor and reigning queen of cake pops is Bakerella, and you must click over and look at all her gorgeous creations. Wait, don't click yet. You'll never come back. But she does have a book out now! How cool is that? And her pops are amazing!

These are my lame interpretation. They are improving but I've discovered there is a bit of a learning curve with these. Fortunately they are super fun to make and unfortunately really, really delicious. Somehow a few of mine always seem to fall off the stick while dipping and I am sadly forced to eat them. 

Ok, here's my little photo tutorial...

You will need:

Cake mix

Container of frosting

2 bags of Candy Melts (I buy Wilton brand at Michael's in the cake/candy making aisle)

approx 50 lollipop sticks (any length, but I prefer the longer ones)

Styrofoam or floral foam blocks

Sprinkles, if desired

Bake a cake. Any cake. Homemade, from a mix... whatever suits you. 

I made a chocolate cake from a mix. Well, actually hubby made this. While babysitting my friend's two kiddos. And taking care of ours so that I could have kid-free shopping day. Is he amazing or what??

Let cake cool completely. This is important. I usually bake it the day before I actually make the pops. Then dump the cake into a big bowl. Break it up a bit if needed because you are just going to crumble it...

...like this. Nice and fine. A few bigger bits are ok. I use my hands for this part- gets pretty messy but it's oddly meditative. 

Now grab your frosting- any kind. The pops themselves are a bit of a process so I just use store bought. But you can make homemade. If you're an over achiever. 

Now scoop almost the whole container into your bowl. I use a big spoon to stir it all up. Add a little more frosting if needed to make a rollable but not too gooey texture. They need to roll up into somewhat firm little balls. Like cookie dough. 

I place them onto a huge cookie sheet covered in wax paper. I usually get 40-50 pops from one cake, depending how big I roll them. Here's a little tip: roll them smaller. The bigger they are, the heavier they are. And heavy cake pops fall off the sticks while dipping. Then you have to eat them.

Now put your candy melts in a bowl, or two bowls if you are using two colors. I've discovered a shallow bowl makes it easier to dip. Melt them in the microwave according to package instructions. Stir and microwave more until creamy and pretty thin. The candy in the photo above is too thick. Heat more. 

Dip the tip of each stick into a little of the candy and stick into each ball, about 3/4 of the way through. 

Then take your cookie sheet and put it in the freezer for 10-15 minutes. I always have to clear a space big and tall enough. If you don't have space, do these in batches on smaller trays. You can remelt the candy as much as needed. 

Once chilled, it's time to dip! You may need to melt the candy a bit more at this point. Make sure to cover the ball all the way, so the candy touches the stick. This keeps them on the stick a bit better. (I accidentally dropped some sprinkles in my bowl of candy melt... oops.)

I love they way they look with matching sprinkles on them... almost like glitter. If you use any sprinkles, do it right after you dip each pop while the candy is still wet. 

Then stick each pop in the foam block to harden. I find that I sometimes have to stick the un-dipped pops back in the freezer once or twice during this process... if they get too warm they start to fall off the sticks while dipping. Then, again, you have to eat them.

I got a bit inventive while making this batch and crammed some floral foam into a couple cute, tall containers I had. Then covered the foam with tissue paper, and stuck my finished pops into that. It looked so cute! 

These were for a baby shower, to celebrate my cousin's baby boy arriving in January. I love the blue and teal together. 

I did not, however, love the brown. Most of the candy melt colors are flavored vanilla, but the brown (naturally) is chocolate. YUM. But just not as pretty. So I set aside these four for momma-to-be. Or her kiddos. But pregnant mommas sometimes need four double chocolate cake pops. 

Click here to see my bee-shaped cake pops for Beckham's first birthday party. They were my first batch ever. I think I'll be sticking with these round, solid color ones. :)

These red ones I made for my sister-in-law's baby shower... the theme was Ruby, so I used red velvet cake. :) And speaking of Ruby, she arrived 11 days ago and is the most adorable, perfect, sweet little girl you could imagine! Love her. 

Notice the foam blocks covered in tissue paper? Sure wish I'd have thought of the foam-in-a-cute-container idea sooner.

This batch was for a friend's daughter's birthday party, and I decided to keep it simple and do them upside-down to avoid the whole foam block situation. They still looked super cute on a fun platter, and this was definitely easier. But I do love the way they look standing up.

Don't forget to make your laundry detergent to donate to a shelter and come back and enter my giveaway!!