Jen's shower

Anne and I hosted Jen's baby shower today - everything turned out great!

First, the invitations. The final version had a safety pin across the diaper - much cuter in person!


Our next big idea was to make a teddy bear cake. Thank goodness my mom stepped in to help (or rather, actually do the entire thing for us.)

Step 1: Getting the cake out of the pan (I bought the pan and Anne made the cake - as you can see we were very instrumental in the creation of the teddy bear cake.) Here is mom carefully opening the pan up.


Step 2: Keep trying to get the cake out of the pan. See that the bear's face is still stuck in the pan.


Step 3: Finally! Bear out of pan! Use toothpicks to help hold bear together, then crumb coat it and let it dry, so you can ice it.


And voila - a teddy bear cake!!!! It turned out SOOOOOO adorable!


My drink containers once again in action.


The food setup. We had fruit w/ dip, cucumber sandwiches, pizza dip with bread to dip into it, a chicken club/veggie pizza thing, and baked brie bites. Yum!


This is part of the gift that Anne and I gave Jen. We painted the box so that it matches their nursery.


Painting onesies was such a hit at Anna's shower that we wanted to do something similar at Jen's, so we painted bibs!


The finished bibs all together, plus some close ups of my favorites.


(I made the PARTY one on the right)




The one in the middle is hard to read in the picture - it says "Spit Happens."


We had a few mini guests at the shower - Gavin (Megan and Allen's little boy -he's almost a year old)


And Molly (Anne and Kyle's little girl - she's 5 weeks old)


Poor Mr. Bear at the end of the shower ....

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had Thanksgiving at our house for the first time this year and everyone had a great time! It was Jason & I, my mom, Karen, Patrick, Susan, Roland, and Matt.

First, my favorite part - the table!


A close up of the napkin, with the chocolate leaf "favor" that I made for everyone.


Just a neat angle of the table.


The Felts family always deep fries the turkey, so that's what we did as well. The night before we injected it with strained italian dressing, white wine, and then rubbed it all down with Tony's Seasoning. Then on Thanksgiving, before putting it into the fryer, the guys tied its legs together.




Then came the fun part! The guys all sat outside (in freezing weather!) and fried the turkey - while enjoying some beverages and cigars.


At various points, the ladies took a break from the inside cooking (and munching!) and joined them.



The turkey, ready to be carved! After they were done frying it, we let it sit for about 45 minutes to develop the flavors even more.


Carving was a family event ...


And now for the rest of the food. In this picture, starting at the top, there was a relish tray, green bean and corn casserole, sweet potato puffs, deviled eggs, jello/pretzel salad, stuffing, turkey, gravy, and rolls.


But that wasn't all! Here (again starting at the top) there is macaroni and cheese, broccoli casserole, creamy mashed potato bake, and peas.


For dessert we had pecan pie and a caramel apple layer cake. It's the first cake that I've ever made from scratch and I think it turned out pretty well!


After dinner we laid around, watched tv, looked at the ads, and took some naps. Before the Colts game started we also played a few games on the Wii and Catchphrase. Then we watched the Colts win and headed to bed!

What a day!

Anne's shower

Anne and Kyle Hultgren are also expecting a girl! She should arrive around the first of December. We had her shower today at Kay Hultgren's house. It was another beautiful day!

Here are the invitations that I made! There were actually four different ones - the differences were the stickers at the top.


This is the front cover of a book that we made, where people wrote out advice for the parents-to-be. The finished project had silver rings at the top that held the book together.


Part of my gift to them was a diaper cake that I made (with help from Jen!) On the front is the book, "The little mouse, the red ripe strawberry, and the big hungry bear." In the invitation we requested that everyone bring a book instead of card. They got about 30 books, and NO duplicates!


Cake that we had Taylor's Bakery make:


The punch in my punch bowl that I got from Grandma! It had pink lemonade, sprite, and raspberry sherbert. To help dress it up, and keep in line with the pink and yellow theme - I floated raspberries and lemons in it.


Some of the decor. The little stuffed animals are holding the favors - little bottles filled with pink and yellow jelly beans.


And my favorite part- the food!! We had veggie pizza, spinach dip, blt bites, cucumber sandwiches, stuffed strawberries, white chocolate covered strawberries, chicken salad sandwiches, baked brie, and crab dip. I think I may have gained 10 lbs in one afternoon!


To see the rest of the pictures, go to:
Anne's Shower

Anna's shower

Anna and Ryan Dilger are expecting a little girl around the end of November. We had a shower for her on October 14th, at Anne's house. It went great and everything was so beautiful!

Anna grew up on a sheep farm, so of course we needed a little lamb on her invitations! Anne and Jen came over one night and we made these:



The food at the shower was fantastic - Nate (Anna's older brother) does some catering on the side, so he provided all of the food. Chicken salad sandwiches, mini salads, sliced french bread with a cream cheese type spread and a piece of meat on it, and petit fors. So good!

The biggest hit of the shower were the onsies. Most of us aren't really into games anymore, but we still wanted something to do, so we had onsies for everyone to decorate. I won't lie, I was a little nervous about how they'd turn out, but some of them you could buy in a store!



I'm hoping someone got better pictures of the food and decor (a few little lamb things and lots of pink!), because mine didn't turn out. You can see other pictures of the onsie decorating and finished products at:
Anna's Shower

It's 5 o'clock Somewhere

The Jimmy Buffett concert was on Tuesday and we had such a great time! We had about 15 people over to our house for a preparty. Mom let me borrow all of her Buffett decorations, so here is what I did:

For food we tried to relate everything to Buffett. We had:

Fruit kabobs and a margarita fruit dip served in a coconut (Margaritaville and Coconut Telegraph)

Crackers and shrimp dip in a volcano shape (Volcano)

Taco Pinwheels (Nautical Wheelers)

Chips and Peach/Mango Salsa (Last Mango in Paris)

5 layer mexican dip (It's 5 O'clock somewhere)

Cheeseburgers (Cheeseburger in Paradise)

We also had Crab Meltaways and brownies but I couldn't figure out how to fit those into the theme.

It was BYOB but we had glasses from our cruise that people could use for their "Boat Drinks."

In the afternoon, after a drink or two ....


Towards the end of the night, after many drinks!

You can see the rest of the pictures at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lafletcher80/JimmyBuffett