One of my best friends just had a baby girl! To celebrate the upcoming arrival of her sweet little baby we had to have a party because we are party girls! Our theme was simply pink & green. My friend Kate ordered the invitations from Tiny Prints & they were beautiful & very nice. My friend having the baby was Katie, not Carmen :)
We had a brunch and let me just say, everything was
delicious! More details on the food in a minute.
Kate was hosting the shower with me but ended up having to go to a funeral. We planned a lot of the details together & she went to the Safeway floral dept to come up with a centerpiece. She & the florist worked together on a design, but it was way less money to put the arrangements together ourselves than it was to have the florist do it. Thing is, Kate is good at putting flowers together. I am not. I picked up the flowers on Friday afternoon & at some point late Friday night I stood at my counter for way too long arranging these babies. It was not going well & I almost gave up & decided to call Abby (who is seriously amazing at flower arrangements) in the morning to beg her to come do it. They worked out in the end and it's a good thing since Abby ended up having a hectic morning & really couldn't have come. I ended up getting lots of compliments on them which is always a nice pat on the back, even though I know I am the most amateur of amateurs when it comes to floral arrangements. I've ruined lots of flowers. Just saying. (I wish I'd gotten a close up)
The food:
Miyeko put together these awesome fruit & yogurt parfaits. They were so great that I've
asked bugged her for very specific instructions a few times and I'm serving them at a stake Relief Society brunch I'm in charge of (the brunch part). She did more than just layer yogurt & granola & fruit. Plus I want details - what kind of yogurt, what kind of granola. You know, why mess with perfection? But look how much she dressed them up? And she says she's not crafty.
Liar!
Abby made these cream cheese filled strawberries. Inspired by
this recipe (found via Pinterest) but with her own modifications.
Kayla made
Overnight Sausage and Egg Casserole from
Our Best Bites. It was SOOO good! My family has a traditional egg/sausage casserole that we eat on almost any holiday, but after eating this one I might make it instead next time!
I made French Toast Soufle in ramekins instead of a 9x13. Jeremiah's mom got the recipe from his aunt Heather & made it for us a year or so ago & it's a new favorite. Since finding the recipe we make it along with our egg/sausage casserole at holidays.
The perfect companion to any amazing french toast casserole is definitely this buttermilk syrup. Heaven! My particular recipe is called Magleby's Amazing Buttermilk Syrup that my aunt Lorie gave to me, but there are lots of buttermilk syrup recipes out there. Kate found these super cute syrup dispenser's at the 99c only store in Mesa. Kate made several batches of syrup & everyone got to take home a dispenser full of pure awesomeness as their party favor!
Who would have thought bacon could be pretty? I came across the skewered bacon on Pinterest from
this site & I think it's brilliant!
We only played 2 games. One was the extremely easy to throw together play-doh baby game. I re-found the idea on Pinterest (love pinterest!) and saw how cute
this girl made it (plus she has some other good ideas too). Katie chose Abby's baby as the winner :)
The other game we played was baby gift bingo (don't know what the official name would be). In case you haven't played it it's a great baby shower game to take some of the attention off the mom opening gifts, which can be uncomfortable (for her). Give everyone a blank bingo card & have them fill in the squares with things they think the mom will recieve. Items like a blanket, pacifier, hair accessories, shoes, diapers, etc. Then as the mom opens presents the guests are checking off bingo squares. I gave a prize to the first person to get a bingo, but next time I will have 2-3 prizes prepared for the bingo game. Sara got a bingo pretty quickly and then the attention was totally back on Katie so it would've been good to have more prizes to keep it going.
I took a big step & ORDERED cupcakes! It was hard to do but so glad I did! Jeremiah was very proud of me! LOL Our hospital bakery is pretty great! These cupcakes were ding dong cupcakes with filling & ganache on top. They were excellent! Even Jeremiah, who doesn't really like cake/cupcakes, liked them.
It was a fun party and it's always great to spend time with friends & eat delicious food. I think it was a great way to celebrate Katie & her new baby girl! I'm so happy for her!
(2/25/12)
