a bit delayed...baby shower

I apologize first off for the lack of posts (this is becoming the opening line to every post lately) though I'm hoping summer will prove to be much less hectic and open some time for blogging (and cooking/decorating/etc.). So here’s hoping! Now this post should have gone up sometime in January but alas, i am a procrastinator. A good friend of mine had a BEAUTIFUL baby but pre-birth i helped with her baby shower. I was browsing through my pictures and realized i had a few taken specifically for the blog and thought "better late than never" so here is my seriously belated post with a few ideas for a (hopefully) amazing baby shower!

My job within the big picture of the shower was goody bags and the cake!! So let’s start with the goody bag! For both of these ideas, i was actually inspired by someone else so i take no credit for their obvious brilliance. The goody bags were first an idea of my mom’s (and let me add, she is a wonderful women to get ideas from!). The contents of these bags were purchased almost exclusively at the dollar tree (my favorite store, see previous post). I got small 'Chinese takeout boxes' in pink from this wonderful store and organza bags with drawstrings. The boxes and bags were 6 for a dollar! Can’t beat that!! My little sister had a sleepover and mom filled little takeout boxes with candy and they look spectacular! so obviously i stole this idea and passed it off as my own...just kidding!! i give credit where credit is due! I put gumballs in the organza bag, little candies in the boxes and then placed both (along with extra candy) in little gift bags. lucky for me, the shower was right around valentines day so pink candy was everywhere! although guest may have been confused when they received conversation hearts in a gift bag for a baby shower... oh well. anyways, they turned out great!! Who doesn’t want a bag full of candy (valentines themed or not) that looks so great? No one, that’s who.

very sophisticated 

yum!!

taste the rainbow!

On to the cake! This was also an inspiration! Another friend had done a beautiful rainbow cake for a previous party and i fell in love!! My mom had also done rainbow cakes but i loved how this particular cake seemed to melt the colors together. There were no definite lines separating the colors, making the final product not only delicious, but incredibly 'trippy'. I used a regular recipe, though at the advice of this friend i substituted egg whites, which made it even more delish (if its possible to make cake even more yummy...) and I used gel food coloring to make the colors vibrant. I separated equal amounts of the cake batter into six bowls and colored each separately. The gel only came in primary colors so i utilized first grade art class for this project to make the secondary colors. I may or may not have drawn out a color wheel to make them correctly...it’s a definite possibility. But even with my mere grade school experience in mixing colors, i managed to make s fantastic green if i may say so myself. (I may be the first person ever to brag about the 'amazing green they mixed' but that’s how i roll). After mixing all these beautiful colors (Roy g Biv anyone?) i layered red, orange and yellow in one cake pan and (the fabulous) green, blue and purple in another. They came out amazing! I used a regular white icing and did my best attempt at flowers. As you can see by the pictures, i failed miserably, but i think the skittles as centers distracted people from the travesty of what i was trying to pass off as a flower. The point is, the cake was delicious and the inside was beautiful!! My cake decorating skills may need some work (is there a class for that?) but my color mixing and cake baking skills are just about top notch! Basically when it comes to refracted light, I rock it in cake form.

notice the excessive use of skittles...

you can barely see my fantastic green....

when it comes to drawing flowers with icing...i am more of a Monet...impressionist.

so thats my post on how i rocked the baby shower (with some serious help, i'm not this creative on my own!) so go try it out!! especially the cake!! the steal a line from the lucky charms guy, "Its magically delicious!" enjoy!! 

the adventure continues....