invitations

I'm excited to be throwing a baby shower, actually I should say a baby sprinkle since she has two boys already but is expecting her first girl, for my friend and neighbor. I have had so much fun planning and dreaming this up. I can't wait for it all to come together. So here's a little sneak peak at things to come. I truly believe the invitations sets the tone for the party so I hope mine says cute and fun. What do you think?

Teacher Appreciation

Teacher appreciation week is this week and I've been lucky enough to be able to help out little at my boys school. For teacher gifts this year I thought I'd try my hand at stationary. Let's just say I won't be opening my own shop ~ probably ever. It was fun to play around with and I hope they like what I did. I made flat note cards with their names, thank you cards, and book labels. I think they turned out pretty cute. I love my digital scrapbooking kits!





The tags on the bag says: "A teacher affects eternity; she can never tell where her influence stops." Henry Adams.

Ladybug Party

Because I am the way I am I have already decided on a theme and started collecting ideas for my girls birthday party this year (in October).

I thought I could go through what I've found so far and maybe that would inspire me more or someone out there would have some more fabulous ideas. I'll try and site my findings best I can.


First of course they will need party hats just for them and of course for the rest of the guests. I'm hoping to find some red polka dot paper and use black marabu and polka dot ribbons. I found this SUPER cute out fit at Miacarina. I think it would be perfect for Holland and of course Ellie would need something as well. I found a black and white pettiskirt at Halo Heaven for her and I'll make a T just for her too.

For the favors I've found lots of cute things. starting at the top ~ chocolate ladybugs, ladybug pencil and erasers, ladybug pen, two different kinds of ladybug stickers, ladybug note pad, ladybug bubbles, and of course a net to catch them in. I thought it would be fun to put the favors in clear pail with a cute label and some ribbons of course. (not everything here will be in the pail, just ideas) most things I found at the Ladybug Gift Store. Also found some things at Oriental Trading and Birthday Express
When I saw this cute red and black favor box the first thing that came to my mind was that it would be fun to serve the kids lunch in these. Stick a cute label on the front with their name on it and serve with a water bottle with a matching label. The oreo suckers I thought I could make look like ladybugs and put a wrapper on them and a cute tag. I've found lots of ideas for ladybug cakes but haven't decided what to do yet.
I'm excited to get started on the decorations. I think I can make paper ladybugs to put up, a banner, pom poms, balloons, and I want to design my own invitation and all the labels and tags and a door sign.

So that's what I've got so far. Any more ideas?

stuffed strawberries

These are so yummy and so easy to make. We made these for the baby shower we did a few weeks ago but they are so good I had to make them for my mom and sisters when we got together this last week.

The recipe is very basic:
8oz of cream cheese at room temp
1/2 C of powdered sugar
beat together until creamy
cut the tops of the strawberries off to make a flat surface then quarter them but do not cut all the way through.
put the cream cheese in a piping bag fitted with a large tip and stick in the strawberry to fill.
I melted some chocolate chips in a ziplock bag and drizzled that over top.

See super easy yet so impressive, give them a try this season.

Pleasantly Pink Baby Shower

I was lucky enough to do a baby shower with my good friend Dacia for another friend who is having her first girl after two boys. Of course we did all things pink in her honor.

This centerpiece I saw at the Party Dress which I fell in love with right away. We so tried to get an Edwardian umbrella like the one in the picture but they are super expensive from US sites and then ran into problems trying to get one here from the UK. Next time I'll have one.


The food was SO yummy!
These are stuffed strawberries which I found at Kraft, they were so good!


I found a really good recipe for a Caesar Club sandwich from the Barefoot Contessa at the Foodnet Work site. The original plan was to put the sandwiches in Glassine bags with a cute label but the bags ended up being to small. So now I have two dozen bags with tags and I'm not sure what to do with them, oh well I'll come up with something. (please excuse my misspelling)

We made these paper cones which were inspired from The Hostess With The Mostess, we filled them with candy popcorn.


I found these molds at Michaels and wanted to use them to see how they'd work out. We filled them with raspberry mousse and they were a big hit.

It's not a party if you don't have cupcakes.

We served chips and dips. The dips we put in the little party cups and the chips in Glassine bags.

We hung the tissue poms and paper lanterns from dowels that I painted white and stuck them in vases on a bed of rose petals.

sparkling pink lemonade

and the favors were mini cupcakes in a super cute milk carton container.

I LOVE to do a party and had so much fun doing this one with Dacia. If you want to see an AMAZING shower she did for her sister you need to check out her pictures here. WOW is all I can say.

Great Giveaway!

One of my favorite places for meal inspiration is Kara's Kitchen Creations. She has great recipes and I haven't not liked anything I've tried from her blog yet. I think my favorite is the Outback Chicken recipe, so yummy! Well she's having a giveaway and I so need to win, it's a 6 quart slow cooker and I want it!!! hop on over and take a look and enter to win, but if you do win you owe me big!
Good luck!

Transformer Cake

Disclaimer: I am NOT a professional!!!! nor do I claim to be as good as one.

Anyway, a friend of a friend asked if I could do a Transformer cake for her boyfriends birthday So I figured hey why not. This was my first time working with fondant and I was a little nervous. I really don't care for the taste of this stuff so I didn't want to cover all of the cake with it but I knew I had to use it for the faces. I also found the font on line and figured what the heck, it was a lot of cutting. I really did enjoy doing this and can't wait to do my next one.