Lavender favors

One of my very close friends from high school is getting married to a great guy this month. She was the maid of honor in my wedding, and now I am a bridesmaid in her wedding. I am so thrilled for her. She is a great girl and has had her share of bad guys. I'm so glad she found a keeper.

The other bridesmaids and I planned Becky's shower and split up the duties. I opted to make the favors and get the prizes. Lavender is theme color for the wedding, so I made everything in shades of lilac and lavender.

For the little girls at the shower, I made flower barrettes. Using a hot glue gun, I attached grosgrain ribbon to metal barrettes. When that dried, I glued on little fabric flowers.

I clipped them to a piece of the same ribbon I used in the barrettes and then tied on a tag I made.

For the ladies in attendance, I made lavender sachets. I ordered a bulk bag of lavender, a bottle of lavender oil, and lavender organza pouches. They were quick and easy to put together: a couple spoonfuls of lavender, a few drops of lavender oil, and tie on the tags. They were pretty and smelled great.

I love a good quote and spend hours each year picking the perfect one to put on my Christmas letter. This is one from the poet William Blake I chose for Becky's shower favors:

"To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour."

--MM

Hot dog!

I love a good theme. In that spirit, I planned R's third birthdya party with the tongue-in-cheek theme of a sausage party. It was going to be almost all boys in attendance after all! So we stocked up on brats, hot dogs, and veggie dogs, and I made bowls of all the fixings. We even got Ruby a special costume for the occasion.

I wanted to make a hot dog cake of some sort, but those all the recipes I found online involved wrapping artifically-colored fondant around Twinkies. That did not sound appealing, and frankly I find food that looks like something drastically different than it tasts like is gross. So I decided to go abstract:

                                                          I made a lemon cake that was very light, tart and tasty. Then I had T roll two cartons of raspberry sherbert into a log to be our hot dog. We wrapped it in waxed paper, and let it refreeze in the freezer. When we were ready to go, I sliced the lemon cake down the middle and put the hot dog in place and a swirl of whipped cream from a can became our surreal mustard. It was really tasty.

I wanted this party to be super fun for the kids, but I did not have the energy to plan a lot of games and activities. Instead, I invited just our cousins, grandparents, and the family of our old nanny. And I rented this:

I didn't tell the boys it was coming, and it was so much fun to watch them watch the guy set it up! They had a blast jumping around in that thing and were sad to see it deflated at the end of the day.

--MM