Sugar and Spice Baby Shower Crafts and Ideas!

Today, my dear friend Nancy and I co-hosted a baby shower for our friend Laurel. The theme was Sugar and Spice to celebrate Laurel’s baby girl, due in November. We put a lot of heart and crafts into this shower, so I wanted to share some of our decorations, food, and ideas!

Each seat had a lovely place setting with a name tag, a rolled napkin tied with ribbon and a pen, a pink flower, and a games packet which you can’t really see in this shot

We made a lovely candy inspired centerpiece, and mocktails, which I call Cos’mama’politans. They were made with 7Up, orange juice, grenadine, and a maraschino cherry.

For decoration on the gift table, I used mod podge and the same paper from the banner to decoupage the baby’s initials.

We played a guess the spice game, and covered the spice jars that Nancy already owned with cloth. It’s the same cloth we used on the favors!

Here is a shot of the food table!

We served pumpkin cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting for dessert.

We made jar cookies for favors. The idea is that the tags have the instructions on them, and guests take the jars home, add the wet ingredients, and bake. They were super cute!

Another view of the favors. [/caption]

Shower guests! — Everyone enjoyed the shower!

It was super fun to plan, craft and execute the shower with one of my closest friends! Thanks, Nancy, for being awesome and crafty, and throwing this shower with me! 🙂 It was cool to be able to love on our friend from afar (she lives in Michigan now) and celebrate her pregnancy!

Here is a rundown of the food, games and crafts:

Food:
– Strawberries, hulled, and filled with a marscapone, balsamic vinegar, cream cheese, and powder sugar, blended together
– Sliced red and orange peppers
– Pumpkin dip and vanilla wafers
– Deviled eggs
– sausage meat balls
– fresh salsa and chips
– spinach dip and pita chips
– garlic bread
– Cos”mama”politans
– CANDY!

Games
– guess the spice
– guess the name that the initials represent
– draw and pass game (this game is a little confusing to explain. Basically, everyone has a stack of papers equal to the number of people in the room. Each person writes a word or phrase related to pregnancy or babies. Then you pass the stack. You look at the stack given to you, place the top paper that had a word or phrase on it on the bottom. Then you draw that word. Then everyone passes. You look at the picture given to you, place it on the bottom. Then you write your best guess of the drawing on the top sheet. Everyone passes. Then you draw the phrase. So on and so on until you get your stack back. Then, you share and its hilarious)
– Thank you card lottery. Have a stack of pre-return-addressed thank you cards. have each guest write their name and address on the front of the card. Then have a drawing for a prize. In this way, the new mama has a stack of already addressed thank you cards. It makes it alot easier on her!
– Advice. We had die cuts of baby related shapes, and had each guest write some advice for the new mama on the die cut. I am going to put the die cuts in a photo book and mail them to the mama. A great present/keepsake! I’ll post a few pictures when I finish it!

Decorations:
– It’s A Girl banner, made from tulle ribbon from Hobby Lobby, and hand cut letters, tied at the ends with ribbons
– Pom Poms
– Tulle Runner
– Candy centerpiece
– Modpodge Initials
– Name cards
– Napkin rolls with ribbon
– Flowers
– Candy accents in white and pink

Favors:
– we stole the favor idea from here: http://www.bakerella.com/mix-things-up/ and then Nancy created takes that fit our baby shower theme, and used beautiful color coordinating cloth to cover them. We used the recipe from that site, also, and Nancy tested them out and said they were delicious!

So I think that it is! Feel free to message if you want more details on anything we put together!

Kalbi, Warm Fennel Salad, and Rootbeer Risotto

For dinner tonight, I made kalbi, warm fennel salad and a root beer risotto.

For the kalbi, I used a recipe from Food Network which you can find here.

In case you aren’t familiar with kalbi (or galbi), it is a korean barbecued short rib. To really do this right, you would purchase korean cut short ribs. The cut is sometimes called “flanken.” It’s a smaller cut of meat that grills faster. However, I bought American style short ribs and sliced the meat off of the bone. I also bought a small sirloin steak and thin sliced that to see how the two different types of meat fared in this cooking style.

I pretty much followed the food network recipe to a T, except I could not find Mirin in our local grocery store and didn’t feel like hitting an Asian store in the rain today. So I used white cooking wine instead. Also, in hind sight, I would add three times as much green onion as it calls for, and 2/3 as much soy sauce, as I found the marinade to be a bit salty.

Other than that, I thought they turned out delicious!

For the side dish, I wanted to create something light, that would compliment the heavy flavors and feeling of the beef main dish. I decided to create a warm fennel salad. While I don’t think the salad is something I would make on its own just for fun, I thought it was an excellent side dish to the kalbi.

It’s also a Sasha-Original-Recipe! 🙂

Ingredients:
1 bunch fennel, sliced thin
1 stalk celery, sliced into thin half moons
6 baby carrots, sliced into small rounds
1/8 cup cooking wine
1/2 nectarine, diced
1/2 tbspn chili oil (optional, can use any oil)
1 tspn mango vinegar (optional)

Heat a pan with 1/2 tbspn oil. I used chili oil to add flavor, but you can use olive oil, grapeseed oil, or any other anti-stick. Add in fennel, and sautee in the oil for about 1 minute. Add the other vegetables and the cooking wine. Let cook for about 4 minutes. Add in cooking wine, vinegar, and nectarine. Cook until vegetables are slightly tender but still crisp. It’s a warm salad, not a stir fry!

And finally, the dessert! I made a root beer float dessert risotto!

A recipe completely of my own making! Here it is:

Ingredients

:
Rice:
1 cup arborio rice

Flavoring Liquid:
1.5 bottles of IBC rootbeer (2 cups)

Base for toasting risotto:
1 tbspn butter
1 tbspn brown sugar
1 tspn dark rum

Base Liquid:
3.5 cups 1% milk
5 green cardamom pods
1 stick cinnamon
1 tspn vanilla

Topping:
2 tbspn marscapone
1 tbspn rootbeer

Instructions:
In a pot, put all of the base liquid ingredients in a pot and heat until warm. Take care not to burn or boil the milk. Keep it handy and on a low boil.

In a skillet, heat the base for toasting risotto. Once the butter is melted and the sugar stirred in, then add the rice. Stir the rice until the grains are glassy. Add in 1 c of rootbeer and stir until it is absorbed. Add in .5 cups of root beer and stir until it is absorbed.

Start adding in the base liquid one ladle full at a time, stirring until it is absorbed. Do not feel like you have to stir in ALL of the milk, but keep adding it in until the risotto is cooked, tender, and creamy. At the end, add in 1/4 cup of root beer to create a delicious frothiness.

Serve warm. Use the remaining rootbeer to top off your risotto root beer float (the warm risotto absorbs it pretty fast). You can add a creamy marscapone topping if you’d like. I stirred the marscapone and rootbeer together and then put a dollop on top.

Ta da!

Travel Updates

I have been having a BLAST traveling as much as I have!

So my last post came from Lexington, KY, where I was visiting the baby sister.

Then I came home to STL for a week, and Jonathan’s little brother was visiting us. We had a blast spending time with him! He was super helpful and helped me reorganize the kitchen. Jonathan got to have a great 8-person halo guys’ night, and I hear the guys had a great time!

Then last Monday, Curtis kept me company on the long(LOL) drive to Centerville. It felt long, but was nothing compared to the 14 hour drive to Boston!

I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday enjoying Centerville, my parents, old friends, and Alysha even showed up for a night! Ooohhh nostalgia! I love coming home!

Then on Thursday, we drove to Boston, which was a super long drive! Alysha had a dream that I lost my legs (WHAT?) in a car accident, so my dad drove nearly the entire way super carefully to make sure I arrived with all my limbs. LOL! Saira cooked us dinner on Thursday night. On Friday, we went to Salem and saw a witchcraft museum and walked along the water. Saturday, we bought a bunch of weird fruits and had a smorgasbord of random foods for lunch. Then we went to a restaurant called Oleana (http://oleanarestaurant.com/) where I had the best dessert of my life. On Sunday, I met up with an old friend and we went out to deer island and saw the USS Constitution sail. Then in the evening, we had a lovely Pakistani dinner to celebrate Eid, and then Saira and I played Dominion.

Monday, we made the long drive home. Today, I just sort of hung out. 🙂 Mom and I made samosas together, which was really fun!

Tomorrow, my friend, Randal, and I are going on a mini road trip. We’re driving up to Akron to see Hilary tomorrow, and then on Thurs we’ll go to Cleveland to see Nicole, and we’ll come back on Friday.

Anyway, that is sort of the short run down of my travels. I am having an ABSOLUTE BLAST! 🙂 It is so much fun to see family and friends.

Life is good. 🙂

But I am also looking forward to getting back home and into some sort of routine…(YEAH RIGHT!)

I’ll try to take and post more pictures, haha. That would make updates much more interesting!