Spring Bunny Baby Shower Part 3: Diaper Cake

So, I feel like I do the same thing for every baby shower, but diaper cakes are stinkin' cute! You can see my first official attempt at making one here.

For this cute spring bunny shower, the color scheme was pink, grey, and white (to make sure our decor matched Baby's room). My co-workers and I made this diaper cake in about 45 minutes from start to finish (not including the sock-flowers that were made by another co-worker).

We started with a 14", 10", and 6" cake round. We used Size 1 and Size 2 diapers and a ton of rubber bands. There's tons of tutorials out there, so I won't bore you with the details.

Tips for a Cute Diaper Cake

• Use labeled diapers (like swaddlers) or mark your diapers with different colors of rubber bands (e.g., reds=size 1, blue=size 2). This takes the headache out of Mom's task of unrolling.
• Carefully roll your diapers. I've found that rolling from the open end to the closed end results in a more uniform roll. 
• When forming your cake, make sure the "seam" of the rolled diaper is on the inside. This makes for a much more uniform cake.
• Lots and lots of rubber bands to hold groups of diapers together.
• Squish it until it looks right. Keep pushing on your diaper groups until they make the shape you want.
• Fill in the middle of your cakes with anything you want: extra diapers, baby gifts, tissue paper, etc.
• Use tulle by the roll to contain your diaper layers. They sell super cute sparkly, lacy, and shimmery tulle rolls at that HobLob place.
• Use paper shred as "filler" on top of each layer to hide the diaper tops. This also helps hide any cardboard from the cake rounds. Plus it's cute.
• Add cute baby stuff.

Spring Bunny Baby Shower Part 2: Food

For my friend's shower we decided to go with everyone's favorite meal...brunch! I mean, who doesn't love breakfast food all day long?

Seeing as how this shindig was a Spring themed shower for ladies we wanted to keep the food fun! We opted for some standard brunch staples like sausage balls. The hostess (who hosted us at her beautiful home) created a wonderful twist on standard pinwheels-- Green chile bacon pinwheels. YUM.

Chiles + bacon + cream cheese = I'm there. Add crescents, and I'm stealing the whole pan.

Next up came the mini pancakes. These were just too terribly cute! I stumbled upon some teensie forks at that PartyC place. I knew I had to use them.

With the pancakes, we served some berry butter. You can find the awesomely easy and fool-proof recipe here at PW. Not the prettiest thing to look at unless you have Ree's awesome food-stylin' and photographin' skillz, but absolutely delish none the less.

To balance out all these yummy brunch-carbs, we decided to add in some yummy strawberry yogurt parfaits. I'm not the biggest fan of yogurt (texture aversion), but I'll eat these any day of the week. Simply layer strawberry yogurt, a sprinkle of granola (or that JustBunches stuff), and some berries. Include one of those teensie spoons found next to the teensie forks at that PartyC place. Ta da!

On to the sweets! Of course we had some sugary snacks, too. My super-talented co-worker Jessica of JB Cakes and More made the beautiful nest egg cupcakes. Love me some malted milk speckle eggs!

Along with the beautiful cupcakes, I made Round 2 of Peeps Pops. See Round 1 here! I paired it with a cute little watering can. So very Spring!

The food was all so delicious! In the future I think I may try some mini cereal shots or something of that sort, too. Little shots of dry cereal and shots of flavored milk to pour into them. That sounds yummy, too.

Happy Spring!

Spring Bunny Baby Shower Part 1: Invitations

A lovely coworker of mine is having a little girl soon! I am so excited for her. Three of us at work got together and hosted a fun, little work shower for her. I was in charge of the invitations. We decided to echo the colors from her baby's room. Pink, silver/gray, and white.

The shower theme was a mix of spring, bunnies, and chicks. The invites were 6x6 squares (to make the most use of the back silver paper), and all the paper was purchased at HobLob (50% off of course!).

I used my Sillhouette SD to cut out the bunny shapes at the top of the invite. How cute are those bunny-tooshies?

Catching Up

Whew! So sorry for the lapse in blogging. Didn't intend on taking a 2-month hiatus, but it sure was nice to just relax after the holidays!

In January, Travis and I celebrated our 3 year wedding anniversary! For our anniversary, we decided to cook an oriental-themed meal complete with sushi and fried rice!

In February, we took a trip with our friends to Breckenridge, Colorado. We were so glad for the time away from work and Lubbock. It was great to see everyone! We had a group of 10-12 for the long weekend. We stayed in a ski-in/ski-out cabin that was lovely! We did joke that the cabin was more of a pole-in/ski-out because the run that ended by the cabin was pretty flat.

I've also had the opportunity to go back to Rockwall in the past couple of months. My Nonnie turned 84! We had a lovely get-together with family. My mom came up with an awesome idea: create a poster that had 84 reasons why we love and appreciate Nonnie. It was so great to get to sit down and actually think about all the many reasons why I love her with all my family.

More new posts to come soon!

Christmas Gifts 2011

This year Travis and I decided to make Chex mix for our co-workers. Not just any Chex mix. Pumped up Chex mix! We settled on 4 different kinds: Original, Chipotle, Apple Cinnamon, and Dark Chocolate Coffee Toffee. (I bet you can't guess which one was my favorite! Ha!)

The recipes we used were modified from the basic recipes on the Chex website. Of course we couldn't keep them all the same!

Our chipotle chex mix was modified to include canned chipotle in adobo instead of powdered chipotle. The apple cinnamon chex mix was modified to include cinnamon chex and cinnamon apple chips. The dark chocolate coffee toffee chex mix was modified to include dark instead of semi-sweet chocolate, extra pecans, big chunks of Heath bar, and Starbucks Christmas Blend instant coffee!

 We packaged them in treat boxes from HobLob with that great black/red/white ornament motif. Love it! Also, I saw some cute red glitter gift tags for sale while I was shopping for the treat bags. Unfortunately, they had "To" and "From" written on the back, and they were made with crummy glitter (that kept falling off everywhere). So....I made my own! The glitter paper in the scrapbook aisle was $1.99. It cost exactly the same to make 12 ornament tags as it would have been to buy them. Only mine don't shed glitter everywhere, and I wrote whatever I wanted on the back.

Here's another perfect bow! (squeal!)

Christmas Presents 2011

Our wrapping theme is red, black, and white to go along with our Scarlet and Black Tree this year. I found all of my wrapping paper at HobLob over the past 3 years. I tried to stick with graphic prints in the target colors. Polka dots, stripes, and swirls. Also, HobLob had a whole black, red, and white sparkly ornament line of Christmas decor this year! Yum!

Also, note that there are no plastic-y bows to be found! Mr. Baxter and Mr. Winston love plastic-y bows...and curly ribbon...and sparkles. So, in order to avoid a ginormous vet bill, we opt for classic fabric bows. A tad more pricey, but not as expensive as an x-ray and surgery for the little ones!

I love tying bows. I don't know why. Just plain old bows. Not fancy ones. I love the look of a perfectly tied fabric bow.

I also added a few embellishments this year, including a sparkly snowflake and some jingle bells.

Christmas Tree 2011

Our house is a perfect Christmas house. I know a lot of people say this, but ours is, too! We have a great space to entertain, a warm and neutral palate that compliments Christmas colors, and a perfect spot for our tree right in front of the window!

We didn't have a Christmas tree for our first Christmas. I saved a bunch of money for a whole year so that I could buy Christmas ornaments on the day after Christmas. Then, I saved a bunch of money for another whole year so that I could buy our perfect first tree. We ended up having to call the tree company because the middle strand of lights was out, but it was well worth it!

And let me tell you...this is our perfect first tree!

Our tree is a red, black, and silver Texas Tech tree! Since we are both alumni living in Lubbock, we figured there would be no better time in our lives to have such a tree. We've been collecting Texas Tech ornaments to add to the shatterproof (kitty-proof) red and black bulbs.

It's still a work in progress (as every tree is), but I'm so happy with (and proud of!) what has taken 3 years to come together!