Ashley's Shower: Part II

Here are more details from the baby shower this past weekend. In the previous post I put all the food. Here in this post, is the decor, activities and games that we did for the shower.

Banner created by Erika. She hung it on twine to give it a rustic, natural feel.

Plain wooden frames I painted for decor. I did a bird ABC theme. You know it's hard to find birds that start with A! Albatross was the only decent bird I could find lol. These can be incorporated into the baby's room if they want :)

Bird house I painted. The tree was another theme of the shower inspired by the invitation.

Center pieces created by Heather using mason jars, rocks, moss, manazita branches, nests and eggs.

Bird themed library using books from the actual library and left over branches.

On of the activities was for each guest to leave a finger print on a tree of life canvas so the baby will know what great friends and family he will be supported by. The canvas was designed and painted by Erika.

View of the canvas which will be hung up in the baby's nursery.

Baby shower games. A shower isn't complete without cheesey games. We did the "mystery baby food tasting" and of course the candy bar diaper game.

And for our last activity we had guest decorate all different sized onesies for the baby to grow into.

Here is my onesie I created... of course!

It was such a great shower. The first one that I've actually helped to plan. We got such nice compliments from the guests and of course the mommy to be LOVED it too :) Congrats to Ashley, the momma to be! And thanks to Erika and Heather, we made a great team and it was a success ;-)

Now, as Jay-Z says.... on to the next one! June is booked for a friends wedding and a friend's bridal shower.

Ashley's Baby Shower: Part I

This weekend I helped host my friend Ashley's baby shower! The two other girls (Erika and Heather) who helped put the shower together, have design experience and I love putting together these kind of events, so we made a great team :) We have been planning for the past few months now and it all came together this past Sunday. The inspiration was drawn from the beautiful invitation our friend Erika designed:I love it! How cute is the bird family?! The theme for the shower was birds with the color palate of green, blue and orange with hints of brown and yellow here and there. Our friend Ashley does eco-friendly fashion so we wanted it to be very natural and "naturey" as well. In this first post, I will post all the food from the shower.

Our menu and the frame I painted to match the shower theme.

Close up of the menu. We had sweet and savory items.

Cucumber and radish open faced sandwiches made by Erika. I also made the plate stand. I will post how I did that later :)

Desserts included: lemon blueberry cupcakes, chocolate orange cupcakes, a small lemon blue berry cake, bird's nest treats, coconut macaroons and fruit salad served in sugar cones.


So many pics, so little space... click to see these larger :)


6 inch mini lemon blueberry cake with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream for the mommy to be. Notice the birds match the birds on the invite :)


Everyone loves these homemade coconut macaroons! They have become a staple any time I do an event for my friends lately. They're so easy to make too!

For favors we ordered swirl lollipops and personalized them with our own sticker to match the shower as well a simple bow.

So you can't eat it, but a shower is not complete these days without a diaper cake! I like to keep mine simple, so I made a basket to hold a majority of the contents. Products included all natural baby products from my friend's website Mom To Mom Health!

Gotta wash it all down with personalized water bottles! Label designed by our friend Heather.

Stay tuned for the next post for part II.

may = baby showers

I'm just about finished my spring semester and looking forward to blogging once again this summer! I've been able to bake a bit more, a few cupcakes here and there for friends, but I'm itching to make a cake. It's been awhile since I've done one!

In the mean time I have 3 baby showers this month! One was this weekend that I had to miss :( But I sent over some cupcakes of course ;-)

Red velvet with vanilla bean cream cheese frosting
and homemade cupcake toppers

Next weekend I'm helping host my girlfriend Ashley's baby shower. I'm sooo excited! Here's a little sneak peek at the invitation our friend designed. The theme of the whole shower is inspired by her wonderful art work!

Beautiful invite designed by our friend Erika

We have been preparing for Ashley's baby shower for a few months now. I can't wait to unveil all our hard work next weekend! Until then...

Lucky Monkey Baby Shower

This past weekend I made cupcakes for a shamrock/monkey theme baby shower. The family is Irish (hence the shamrocks) and for the monkeys they wanted the Fisher Price Rainforest monkey. I did my best interpretation of the monkey I could ;-) Cupcake flavors included lemon and Oreo mint.

Since I had extra cupcakes, I made some different flavor combos to bring to my friend's bachelorette party that night. Flavors included lemon or chocolate cake with raspberry swiss meringue buttercream with a Chambord raspberry filling. Kinda funny - I bought the jam at the dutch market and mixed alcohol in it ;-)


I also made a coffee swiss meringue buttercream to top off some of the chocolate cupcakes. I looove the coffee swiss meringue, it reminds me of coffee ice cream and pairs so well with chocolate cake.

The ladies loved them, I mean... Who doesn't love cupcakes after a few drinks?? ;-)

Baby Party Cupcakes

This weekend I attended a friend's baby party (not quite a shower!). It's like a party but with a baby theme and co-ed ;-) I promised to make some cupcakes for the event. How cute are the little baby topper on those cupcakes?! Kinda makes me LOL.

Ready for 'delivery'...

I made two flavors for the party. First, chocolate cupcakes with a caramel swiss meringue buttercream and salted caramel drizzle. I used my go do chocolate cupcake recipe (Martha Stewart's devils food cake) and made a swiss meringue buttercream. To that I added homemade caramel, which took me 2 1/2 tries by the way! No bueno! After I finally made the caramel, I reserved a few table spoons to add to the buttercream and the rest I added kosher salt to make the salted caramel. Yummmmy...The other flavor I made the pumpkin cupcakes with maple cinnamon cream cheese frosting again. Just seemed fitting for the season (around Thanksgiving and all).

A few of us who used to work with the mama-to-be made a special gift for her baby present, that just seemed so fitting... a diaper cake! It was the first diaper cake I've ever made and it was so easy and fun. How cute is out monkey theme?!

Congrats to Tonya who is due in January!

Baby Shower Cupcakes

My mom contacted me with a last minute request for some baby shower cupcakes for one of her co-workers. This is actually my first baby shower so I wanted to try something new... So I whipped these babies up ;-)
Since the theme colors were green and yellow I thought of lemon for yellow. As for the green, I've been wanting to use the matcha powder I had purchased last week, so why not green tea cupcakes? I added a chocolate ganache center too.


The decor idea was from a user on Cake Central. I used the rest of the marshmallow fondant I had from the cake I made last week.