Advice & Wishes for the Mommy to be...

I loved every minute of planning my MOH's baby shower.  I wanted to add lots of personal touches to the shower, which lead me to countless hours of online searching.  One of the things I decided to make, was this advice and wishes jar. 

Here's How: 

I bought a vase from Michael's and decorated it with ribbon and rhinestones. The rhinestones were self adhesive and I hot glued the ribbon.  I found the bottle frame in the dollar section at Target and printed out a little sign/direction.  Last, I used old scraps of scrapbook paper.  I found every pink & green piece of paper I had and cut it into different sizes.  All with enough room for guests to write a little message.  I put a small pail with pink & green pencils on the table for guests to use to write. 

Lemon Cookies

Baby Shower Recipe- The title of these cookies is Easy Lemon Cookies and that is exactly what they were.  My best friend's father loved my lemon blossoms I made over the summer, so I made these with him in mind.  We also already had cake, chocolate covered pretzels and chocolate chip cookies. So light and lemony was the perfect final dessert for the shower.  I have to admit that I'd pick chocolate over lemon any day, but these cookies were my #1 choice for the night.  Delicious!! 

Ingredients

• 1 (18.25 ounce) package lemon cake mix
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• 2 eggs
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• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
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• 1 teaspoon lemon extract
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• 1/3 cup confectioners' sugar for decoration

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).

1. Pour cake mix into a large bowl. Stir in eggs, oil, and lemon extract until well blended. Drop teaspoonfuls of dough into a bowl of confectioners' sugar. Roll them around until they're lightly covered. Once sugared, put them on an ungreased cookie sheet.
2. Bake for 6 to 9 minutes in the preheated oven. The bottoms will be light brown, and the insides chewy.

Tie Onesie

I've been making so much girly stuff lately, I didn't know what to do for a special little guy who was born in January.  I did what I do best and went straight to my trusty craft blogs.  I found this tutorial over at Sumo's Sweet Stuff.  I did a little more searching and found a template at Crap I've Made.  Since then I've made my own template and found out what works best for me. I love making these onesies and know many many more will be made this year! Enjoy!

Strawberry Bread

I made this recipe because we had family in town staying with us.  I needed something for breakfast that I could prepare the day before. I had bookmarked this recipe a week ago from Cookbook Jungle.   This was the prefect recipe and it left the house smelling delicious. It instantly became a new favorite recipe of mine.  I loved this bread.  It was a hit with the whole family. I will definitely be making this recipe over and over again.  The only change I made was adding some brown sugar to the top of the bread before baking.  It made the crust nice & sweet!

Ingredients:
3 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 & 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2 cups sugar
4 eggs, beaten
1 & 1/4 cup veg. oil (You can lighten it by using 1 c. applesauce and only 1/4 c. oil)
2 cups fresh chopped strawberries
1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions:
In large bowl, combine first 5 ingredients. Add egg and oil; mix well.
Stir in berries and nuts until evenly distributed - batter will be
thick. Grease & flour two 9" loaf pans and divide batter evenly into
each. Bake at 350 approx. 1 hour. Cool in pans 10 min. Invert onto
wire rack to cool completely.

Fruit Dip

Since the weather has been so gorgeous around here, we had a cook out tonight.  We've eaten out a bunch this weekend so I didn't want a heavy dessert.  I decided on fruit with dip.  I made this fruit dip from All Recipes.com.  It was pretty darn tasty.  I did make some modifications, which I noted below.   This one would be great to bring to summer cookouts! 

Ingredients

• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 (7 ounce) jar marshmallow creme

Directions

1. Using an electric mixer, blend cream cheese and marshmallow creme until mixed thoroughly.

**I folded in a container of cool whip to the mix and served.  

White Chocolate Popcorn

Baby Shower Recipe: Popcorn is one of my favorite snacks.  A few weeks ago I tried caramel corn and loved it! I had a small bowl I wanted to use for the baby shower and thought a bag of popcorn would fit perfectly.  This was an easy recipe and can be made a thousand different ways.  Enjoy!

Ingredients:
1 bag of kettle corn popcorn
1 cup of white chocolate chips
colored sprinkles

Directions:
1.  Pop the popcorn as directed on the bag.
2.  Pour onto a cookie sheet and cool.
3.  Melt chocolate.  Heat 30 seconds, stir.  Heat another 30 seconds and it should be melted perfectly.
4.  Drizzle over popcorn.  Add sprinkles.
5.  Allow popcorn to cool completely.  Store in an air tight container until it's time to serve.

Pasta Salad

Baby Shower Recipe- I needed a side to go with the subs we had at the shower.  I love pasta salad.  Since I had to make all the dishes the night before, this one was perfect for the menu.  I loved the pasta I used and hubs and I had the leftovers for lunch and dinner.  

Ingredients:
2 boxes of cooked pasta (of your choice)
1 bottle of italian dressing
1 cup of chopped peppers (yellow, red, green)
1/3 cup sliced black olives
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Directions: Mix all ingredients together.  Chill overnight.  Serve & Enjoy!