Tag Archives: ideas

A wedding shower- The food!

Flowers and bees

The day of the shower was beautiful. Sunny, breezy, warm.  And the morning of the shower, my parents and I ran around finishing all of the last minute details for the shower. Starting with these:

Bee pops!

Inspired in part by Pioneer Woman’s “Springy Flower Pot Desserts” and by Bakerella’s infamous “Cake Pops,” I combined the two into these adorable little desserts. I spent the evening before the shower making the bumblebee cake pops.

Bumblebees

I simply followed Bakerella’s instructions to make cake pops… and then dipped them in yellow melting candy, added chocolate chips to one end for their stingers, brown candy coated sprinkle chips for the eyes and painted on their stripes and smiles with a toothpick dipped in melted chocolate candy.

Bees

Aren’t they cute??

Then my mom and I made these:

Flower pot

Using the smallest sized terra cotta pots we found at Hobby Lobby, we made this ice cream desserts.  We placed a vanilla wafer in the bottom, spooned some softened vanilla ice cream into the dish around a plastic straw and covered the top with crumbled oreos (which, with the filling left in the mix, really looks like potting soil!). We froze them like this overnight and the morning of the shower, we wrapped them in bright red and green napkins and tied with a black ribbon. (the wedding colors!)

Dessert

The napkins kept everyone’s fingers from freezing and made the flower pots look like they were wrapped as gifts from the floral department!

We placed cut, artificial flowers and the bumblebee cake pops into the straw immediately before serving.

laughing-bride

And the bride (and everyone else!) loved them.

The bumblebees were pretty time consuming, so I used the rest of my cake balls to make these:

Cupcake Bites

Again, I used wedding colors… and had one of the bridesmaids ask if I sold desserts as a business! I answered, no, but Bakerella should! (have to give credit for genius ideas where credit is due)

We even sent everyone home with a cupcake bite…

Cake boxes

…in their own mini-cake boxes!

Cake of boxes

Mom’s digital craft cutter was responsible for these wedge shaped boxes-

Cake

And the adorable decoration they created when arranged into a layer cake! (Notice that one layer is “vanilla” and the other is “chocolate”!)

Dessert table

As if we didn’t already have enough sweets, we also served some lime bars, heart-shaped elephant ears, and HAMBURGER cookies (vanilla wafers, thin mints, red and yellow icing and green dyed coconut layered together- yum!) which fit our “outdoor”/”summer camp” theme.

We did serve lunch too…

Lunch

Salads and sandwiches!

And for good measure…

Champagne Punch

Champagne punch! Hey- we were all 21! Well, except for this little sweetie…

baby!

But she didn’t get to have any.

It was a beautiful, tasty afternoon. And the leftovers made the next day pretty sweet too!

Leftovers

Choose joy,

E

A wedding shower- the invitations

The invitation

I like being a bridesmaid. It’s all the wedding planning, creating, and fun with WAY less stress and for way less money!

Last Saturday, my mom and I threw a shower for my best friend who is getting married in just under a month. And the first step was creating the invitations.

We started with their wedding colors. Red and black, with apple green accents. Remembering how Rachel and I did a parody on the popular Mastercard commercials for a class project in high school, Mom and I came up with another for our invites.

the perfect guy: $ 3 summers of Camp Duncan

the perfect guy: $ 3 summers of Camp Duncan

Rachel and her fiance met while counselors at camp and since the groom is a pretty important part of the wedding, we started with “the perfect guy.” Mom’s digital craft cutter, the silhouette, cut out the black heart and kissing silhouette that we mounted on the apple green layer.

the perfect dress: $ not telling!

the perfect dress: $ not telling!

Then we stamped and embossed a white dress onto the red layer.

the perfect accessories: $ sensibly on sale

the perfect accessories: $ sensibly on sale

Then we embossed a shoe, crown, earrings, and a necklace in silver on a white layer.

the shower

having friends and family to shower you with gifts: priceless. There are some things that Dan and Rachel have. For everything else, there's going to be a wedding shower!

I then printed all of the shower information on white paper and mounted it on the final black layer.

the invitation

Then I stacked all of the layers and tied them with a black ribbon. The finished size was 5×7 and they were definitely well- received!

AND, they were fun! Up next, the actual shower! (With desserts inspired by the Pioneer Woman and Bakerella!)

Baby Shower Gift

Noah's Ark- Baby Style

Noah's Ark- baby style

 My family has a thing for Noah’s Ark. It’s probably because for several years, my grandpa built and painted small wooden arks and my grandpa sculpted and painted hundreds of pairs of animals and they sold them at craft shows. They were known as “Roger and Joan of Ark.” Each of their 5 kids now owns an ark as well… and my mom has a small Christmas tree that is completely devoted to Noah’s Ark ornaments. Because of this, when I saw the above album as part of a scrapbook kit in Hobby Lobby, I couldn’t  help but buy it for my cousin who’s baby is due within the next 2 months. I love to scrapbook, and have found that most people truly enjoy having/looking through scrapbooks (more so than plain albums) but many are too busy/too intimidated by getting started to ever make their own. Hence my idea for the perfect shower gift. I know a new mom won’t have that much (if any!) time to learn how to scrapbook so I did most of the work for her. I bought the album, complete with kit- matching/complementary papers, stickers, embellishments, etc. and have assembled it WITHOUT pictures. Then, I’m leaving post-it notes with instructions of where to journal (write captions) and what size photos will fit on each framing mat throughout the book. Now, all my cousin has to do, is take photos, trim them occasionally, glue them in where appropriate and write captions for them. It was a little bit of a challenge for me to scrap without photos  because usually my layouts/color scheme center around the photos I want to highlight. However, we know the baby is going to be a boy and having all of the matching papers and stickers helped a lot. (I have supplemented with some of my stash from home too… but only a little). I got faster and it turned out to be really fun!

I think this idea could also be applied to wedding gifts (use their wedding colors and that way, they can have a ready made scrapbook to fill with some snapshots from their wedding- and maybe won’t have to pay for a professional album- or at least, they’ll have some place to put all the pictures that YOU took at their wedding!), or birthdays too. (Make a mini album, themed for how old they’re turning- or, if you’re having a party, have the album match the theme). I’ve included photos of my layouts for your inspiration… I think the pages will look WAY better once they are filled with adorable pictures and handwritten notes from Mom to Son.

A place for that first picture and the baby announcement

A place for that first picture and the baby announcement

Sorry for the glare... it's still in it's sleeve.

Sorry for the glare...

This one is my favorite

This one is my favorite

GRRR… I just spent a long uploading every stinking page and now they’re gone! Plus the front page of this blog is all weird now… What’s the deal with that? I’ll try another post later and maybe it’ll fix itself!

Anyway, I still have a few more pages to make, but I like what I’ve done so far. I hope my cousin will too!

Aren’t baby things adorable? Make something for a baby in your life- it’s fun! :)
Creatively,

E