Bun in the Oven Baby Shower

The girls and I headed up to Utah a couple of weeks ago to help throw a baby shower for my niece Megan. She is having a little girl in just a couple of weeks and we are all so excited (especially my sister Shelley--she's going to be a grandma! crazy!). I saw this idea for a "Bun in the Oven" baby shower and used it as our inspiration for Megan's shower.

First I designed these invitations to be sent out. We stuck with the red and aqua blue colors to have that retro feel, even though she is having a girl.

Shelley's friend Alese made the Bun in the Oven letters for us to use--a perfect backdrop to our present area.

We had a lot of fun putting together our dessert table. Shelley already had the red and white gingham fabric which we put over some boxes on a blue cloth to add some height and variety to the table.

I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make a cake for Megan--a little aqua blue oven with some "buns" on top.

She is due on March 3rd, so the digital readout read 03:02. I covered my 8" square cake with a mixture of modeling chocolate and fondant since I had some of both in the blue color.

Shelley took my cake tops and made some cake balls that she dipped in blue and red candy melts.

The Pinwheel Pops were Sara Lee Pecan wheels that I stuck a sucker stick into. Cute to look at, but really not that tasty. Next time I'm trying this recipe.

We got raspberry sweet rolls and cinnamon sweet rolls from Shirley's bakery in Provo. Amazing. One of my favorite things growing up and still just as good. There was also a big bowl of strawberries and blueberries to try to stay with the red and blue motif.

We made some churro cupcakes that were iced with cream cheese icing and topped with some caramel ice cream topping to give it the look of sweet rolls. Mmmm, they were good. When I say "we" I mean me and . . .

this little cutie. She was so excited to make the cupcakes and help out with the shower. She did a great job with the cupcakes and helping Megan open her presents :)

I had this oven/stove set for my girls already, and it just happened to be the right colors for the shower, so we used it as the display for our churro cupcakes to go with the bun in the oven theme.

Some aqua and red tissue balls finished off the whole look. There is a very good tutorial here for the balls.

We had bread bowls and soup as well. My sister also got the bread bowls from Shirley's Bakery. Heavenly. Some great friends brought the soup, and each one was delicious!

Since the shower was an open house and people were coming and going, we passed on doing any sort of shower games, but I made this recipe box up for people to write advice on for Megan. It was just an unfinished wood box from Michaels I painted and added a little rolling pin on the top I found at the dollar store. I've also seen small rolling pins at Hobby Lobby that would work just great.

I designed these cards that read, "Recipe for raising a good bun" on top and "from the kitchen of" on the bottom. We loved reading all the advice Megan got. My favorite was one that simply said, "Call 1-800-GRANDMA."

We put together a little candy buffet with bags for people to fill up on their way out as a little thank you to them for coming,

All the signs (as well as the other ones on the dessert table) I designed in photoshop to go with the blue and red theme. We taped them to different size round glass jars with some red polkadot ribbon.

We had red twizzlers, cinnamon bears, cinnamon hearts, and swedish fish with aqua M&Ms, chocolate balls, raspberry taffy, and pinwheel lollipops..

I was really excited when I found these little guys in the wedding favor section of Joanns. They were perfect for the candy buffet and so cute.

There were so many friends, neighbors, and family that came. It was a great turnout and Megan got so many cute outfits and gifts for baby Reagan.
And I just have to take a moment and brag about my amazingly talented sister who is incredible at quilting and made Megan this beautiful baby blanket. Isn't is gorgeous?!

(Shelley, Megan, and Me). We are so excited for Megan and can't wait for baby Reagan to be born! We love little girls. Congratulations, Megan!

BYU vs. U of U Baby Shower

The BYU vs. UofU rivalry is a big deal in the state of Utah and just happens to be the inspiration for this baby shower for my friend Jamie. She is an avid Ute fan while her hubby is a true blue fan. It seemed fitting to have a little football rivalry celebration to welcome their new baby boy Logan into the world.

I decided it would be fun to use baby blocks as the basis for the cake, spelling out the two teams in their colors. They share the U so I did a blue shadow to a red U.

Down the outside there was BOY and on the back side was BABY.

and I had to throw in a little fondant football. Isn't it cute?!

Going down the inside was the baby's name: LOGAN (isn't that the cutest name for a boy? I love it).
At the shower my friends Casie and Melanie went all out with the football rivalry theme.
Melanie made these darling chocolate football covered strawberries. Who can pass up a chocolate covered strawberry? They were heavenly.

There was so much yummy food--game day hoagie sandwiches, veggies, fruit, chips and dips, and more--the perfect set up for the big game.

Poor Jamie had been on bed rest with Logan for several weeks, so we had the shower after his arrival. A few weeks ago we all made guesses about what day he would arrive, how much he would weigh, etc, and Casie hung up this cute poster with our guesses (and she made those cute UofU and BYU baby clothes! Super cuteness). Unfortunately I was not the best of guessers and was off by a week on his birthdate, but I couldn't resist voting for Friday the 13th.

She also did this scoreboard sign with all of baby Logan's info. Love, love, love it.

The table was covered in green to represent the football field with goal posts on either end. (When my husband sees these pictures he'll be jealous he didn't get to go to the shower).

And here is my favorite part of the cake. 2 of the blocks were red velvet with cream cheese filling while the other two were blue velvet with cream cheese filling. It seemed fitting to have both so the guests could show off their team spirit with their dessert. The recipe for the blue velvet cake can be found here.

It was a fun evening with great company, yummy food, and fun presents for Jamie and Logan. Kirsten made this amazing diaper cake trimmed in BYU and UofU material.

We are so excited that Logan made it here safely and we could celebrate with Jamie--and even though she's wearing her UofU shirt, we are still friends.

But BYU is better.

Flowers and Butterflies Birthday Cake

A flower and butterfly-themed birthday cake for my friend's little girl. You can't get much girlier than that. I got my inspiration here for this cake, and ran with it. I found the butterfly cookie cutters here on Amazon. They come with a variety of butterfly shapes in them.

Adding a couple fondant bows, edible sugar pearls for the flower centers, and fondant bead border upped the girly volume. Perfect for this little princess:

Make a wish!

Her mommy didn't want anything fruity, so we stuck with a butter cake with chocolate ganache filling, and a chocolate cake with chocolate ganache filling--a chocoholic's dream!

Happy Birthday, Grace! Welcome to the "terrific twos" (for your parent's sake lets hope that is what this year holds rather than the terrible twos :)

Sweet as Hunny Birthday Party

October is a big month in our household--both of our girls had a birthday. And when your husband's name is Christopher and yours is Robyn, a Winnie the Pooh theme just seems perfect for celebrating these milestones.

The first step in the birthday planning was coming up with something for the invitation. My sister and I put our heads together and came up with this little rhyme:

Eliza and Abby, our birthday girls will Bee

Eliza turning one, and Abby turning three.

Come celebrate with us where it's nice and sunny,

For our birthday girls are Sweet as Hunny!

I chose purple, yellow, and orange for the color scheme, and got busy working on the treats (my favorite part!).

I just had to do 2 cakes--one for each of them. I was inspired by a cake I saw here for Abby's Hunny pot cake. I baked 2 6" rounds and 2 7" rounds that I stacked together with the 6" layers on the top and bottom. Then I trimmed around the edges to smooth the lines together and get the hunny pot shape.

I debated on covering it with fondant or modeling chocolate, and finally decided on modeling chocolate, which I think went on so much easier than fondant would have. Some fondant honey inside the pot and dripping out was painted with some gold luster dust to add shine, and the cake was finished off with some fondant bees that I painted black stripes on with some black food coloring (same thing I did with the word HUNNY on the cake). The bees' wings were white chocolate I melted and piped into wing shapes and glued onto the bees with a little chocolate.
For Eliza's cake I was excited to finally use this Winnie the Pooh cake pan I have had in my closet for years. My husband told me I couldn't cover her cake in fondant or modeling chocolate or frosting that would crust over--he wanted it soft and messy for a first birthday cake. I found a recipe for Marshmallow buttercream here and worked great--never crusted over and tasted great. The only thing I might try different next time is substituting part of the butter with shortening to make it a little more stable to heat (especially in the bag when I am piping).

For some other treats, I made Hunny Cake Pops, inspired by Bakerella's pops, chocolate beehives from a mold I found at Gygis in Salt Lake, and Caramel Pretzel Tigger Tails. The Tigger Tails are made just like I made these zebra ones here, except using orange and brown candy melts for the dipping and stripes.

Our lunch menu consisted of some other Pooh bear inspired treats:

Peanut Butter and Hunny sandwiches

Shredded Hunny-barbeque chicken sandwiches

Tigger Tails (Cheetos)

Rabbit's Garden (Veggie Platter)

Mixed fruit with Hunnydew

I saw these darling terracotta pot hunny pots here, and just had to make some for the party. I used them for some of the centerpieces--filled with purple, yellow, and orange taffy with balloons coming out of them. I also used 2 of them to hold the cake pops, and one to hold the crayons for the coloring table for the kids when they first arrived.

We did a couple of activities with the kids--the first was Pin the Tail on Eeyore, but we started it off a little differently. I sat down all the kids and asked them who had seen the new Winnie the Pooh movie and what all the characters were trying to find--Eeyore's tail. We had hidden all the tails in the playground and each child had to go find one before they could play Pin the Tail on Eeyore. I got the printable Eeyore and tails here.

Next we told the kids that Winnie the Pooh needed our help. He was out of hunny and needed us to find us more. Luckily we all spied a beehive pinata hanging in a tree nearby. I saw this idea here and made a paper mache pinata, that I glued yellow yarn around and some paper bees.

I saw this idea here and made a pinata using 3 layers of paper mache, then glued yellow yarn around it with some paper bees. We made the kids wear my husbands black fleece vest so they could be little black rain clouds as they tried to break open the hive. When it finally opened they found lots of candy, including a few Bit O' Honey's.

For favors, I made caramel apples that were dipped in purple candy melts then piped with yellow candy melts on top for the honey. I painted the word Hunny on each of them with black food coloring. Attached to each were different quotes from Winnie the Pooh on friendship.

Well, the kids had fun, and Eliza thoroughly enjoyed her first birthday cake. It was soft and messy, just like her daddy wanted for her. The end results . . .

Poor Pooh Bear. I think he's seen better days. She might have been helped out by her older sister with this cake destruction. If you couldn't find Abby here, next to Eliza eating her cake you could probably find her here--

chomping down on Tigger Tails. That explains the orange lips.

Happy birthday my little girls! "'Sometimes,' said Pooh, 'the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.'" We love you!

Cute as a Button Baby Shower

What do you get when you make hundreds of fondant buttons and a few fondant spools of thread?

The perfect components for a Cute as a Button baby shower cake.

My friend Alisha is pregnant with her 3rd little one, and since all of us friends love to get together, it seemed the perfect reason for a fun little shower. Rachele, Emily, and Paige did an amazing job with the whole shower--food, decor, etc. I'm glad I could help out a little bit by making this cake for it too.

The mommy-to-be loves lemon cake, so I made a lemon cake which I filled with a bosenberry mousse filling and iced with a lemon buttercream. I made the various sizes of buttons and spools several days in advance to make sure they were fully dry. For the banner I piped letters onto some of the leftover buttons which were then glued onto some twine, tied to 2 bamboo skewers, and inserted through the spools of thread into the cake. I had made holes previously in the spools using a straw.

Rachele, Emily, and Paige got a lot of their inspiration for the shower from this post.

They made the most delicious pretzel bites, fruit skewers, and marinated tortelinni skewers as well as panna cotta, button chocolate suckers, and button sugar cookies.

The drinks were lemonade in mason jars with those darling straws.

I loved all these little labels. So darling in the spools!
What a fun shower. Our guest of honor is the 3rd from the left on the back row. We are so excited for Alisha's little boy to make his arrival. I'm sure he will be cute as a button!