Baby Shower Favors

I recently co-hosted a baby shower for one of my friends, and straight off I volunteered for favor-making duties- I just love this kind of stuff, so I snatched up that responsibility right away. I wanted to make something that the gals would take home and actually use...now, I'm a big bath person, so this sounded especially great to me. I just rounded up the following materials and put together little bath salt favors with a cute baby theme!

• Unscented bath salts as well as scented bath salts (pick your fav scent, and check Marshalls or TJ Maxx for really great deals on giant jugs of this stuff- I mixed the two together as the scented ones were a bit overwhelming, so I toned them down with the unscented)
• Glass apothecary jars of various shapes and sizes from Hobby Lobby or Michaels
• Ribbon of your choice (here I used blue in honor of the soon-to-be-born baby boy)
• Plain round white stickers (found these at Office Depot, seriously think they're meant to be yard sale price tags!)
• Stamps of your choice
• Ink pad in color of your choice

So I just mixed the bath salts together to make a lovely smelling mixture, then I filled each of the glass jars with the salts. I finished off the cute favors by gluing a piece of ribbon around the jar (hot glue gun works best), placing a white sticker where the ribbon ends came together, and then stamping the sticker with something cute and fun. That's it! This is an easy way to make super cute favors- perfect for baby showers, wedding showers, birthdays, or any special occasion where you'd like the ladies to leave with something lovely! Have fun!

Pizza ParTAY!

Ok, so one of mine and my husband's new favorite meals is homemade pizza.....now, making homemade pizza can be pretty scary as homemade crusts, and even some store bought pizza crusts can turn out to be mushy disasters; however, they're delish when you use Boboli or something similar. They make these crusts in "thin" now, which I love! So another fun spin on the homemade pizza is the pizza party- the grown up version of when you used to go to Noble Romans and were invited into the kitchen to make your own pie for your Birthday- we've substituted the plastic Noble Roman's crowns with wine- much more fun, by the way. Anyway, this is a great, easy way to entertain friends and get everyone involved in the creation. For this party I bought a few crusts, and assorted toppings (this gets really easy when you buy those pre-chopped peppers, onions, tomatoes, and whatever else you like). My new favorite topping is grilled Cajun chicken- I just seasoned a couple chicken breasts with Tony's Cajun seasoning (so good!) and threw them on the grill and chopped them up (this can be done earlier in the day, or even a day before). Really, all you need is the crust, some sauce, your fav topping, and cheese- oh, and friends and wine! I love this concept as I have found that when a group is over at a house for dinner, despite that fact that you have really comfortable chairs and couches about 10 feet away in the next room, people always gravitate toward the kitchen, even if it means they have to stand- so you might as well put them to work as pizza chefs! So much fun! Enjoy!

Wine Glass, Candle Holder, Whatever...

Ok, so I saw this trick in Everyday with Rachel Ray and I just loved it and thought it was such a clever way to throw together a fun table setting....again, here I am with the theme of make it shine, but don't make it expensive. The Rachel Ray article spun it as a way to make use of mismatched stemware- and there were tons of different kinds of wine glasses in the picture, and I thought, "wait a sec, something's wrong here, I mean, I've broken my fair share of wine glasses in my day, but not enough to have like 10 different kinds of mismatched wine glasses laying around." So then I thought, "well, they don't have to be mismatched, couldn't they all be sort of the same, and at the very least, just whatever I have in my cabinets?" The answer is "Yes!" And here is the finished product. The great thing about this idea is that you only have to buy a few flowers to make this so gorgeous- rather than a full centerpiece worth of them.

So just find a couple different styles of wine glasses- whatever you have on hand, position some of them right-side-up and some upside-down, and throw a few large-faced flowers under some of the upside down wine glasses, and arrange pillar candles as you like inside the right-side-up ones, and on the bottoms of the upside-down ones! Voila! Easy as pie, and very striking! You can really use any type of flower or other plant in this type of centerpiece- for Christmas dinner my very creative mom opted for holly that was growing near-by and evergreen sprigs and we used those where you see the Gerbera daisies here.

For an added touch of color, I found these giant leaves at Nashville's Import Flowers (this place is amazing, by the way), and laid them in a fanned-out sort of arrangement to serve as the base of my centerpiece. These leaves would also be great as place mats at an outdoor shower or other party! Have fun with this one!