Baby Shower - Thank you gifts

Even though we had a fairly small baby shower for my brother and his wife (mostly family and some close family friends), we still had little giveaways for thank you gifts.  I wanted to keep it fairly simple so I made chocolate chip cookies.  I packed 2 cookies in a clear plastic treat bag, and used the stickers found in this post to seal them up.  All in all I ended up with 32 little packages of yummy goodness for people to enjoy.

I was quite happy with how they turned out.  The stickers worked like a charm and the cookies were also quite tasty.

Curious about the cookies?  I actually based my recipe on Alton Brown's, The Chewy.  Although I did have to change a few things when I discovered that I didn't have enough brown sugar for doubling the recipe.  So what did I do?  I substituted part of the brown sugar with more white sugar and some molasses.  I couldn't actually give any measurements since I sort of just threw it in.  I may try to recreate it next time, maybe take down some measurements too.  I actually like my accidental cookies a bit more than the original recipe (which I have made a number of times).  In my opinion they turned out chewier, more moist, and had a richer flavor (if you like a slightly molasses flavor).

On a side note, I now want to make pinwheel everything!  Stickers, cards, tags, random stuff like that.  

Upcoming posts...

We had the baby shower, and now things can get back to normal in my life hopefully.  At least until the next one, next month.

Hopefully I can write a few posts regarding what I did for it.  I tried my best to take some photos, but by the time everything happened I was pretty tired.  I'm actually still tired, so I better go get my rest.

Sorry for such a weird short post, but I just kind of want to give people a heads up of what's to come.  MORE baby shower stuff.

Stamped Birthday Card - Robots!

Remember my failed attempt at a card here?  Basically, I couldn't make an idea pan out.  So instead I just came up with another idea.  And I got to use what have become my favorite stamps to use.

I used a set of 3 robot stamps on a silver cardstock, then colored them with markers (Prisma, since they work nicely on the paper).  I then used a paper edger with robots and gears on some black paper.  Stamps some silver gears behind it.  Layer everything on, and this is what I came up with.

Honestly I'm not that thrilled with it, but my husband seemed to like it a lot.  It's one of those things where I want to change something, although I have no clue as to what it would be.  Maybe the colors, maybe the background, maybe lots of things.  It's too late now though, it's long been given away.

Meanwhile I've also been busy chugging away at the baby shower decorations.  I'm surprisingly on schedule, at least so far.  I think I'm done with the majority of the decorations, and we will just have to set everything up before Sunday.  For the next 3-4 days I will be cooking and making lots of goodies for the party.  Here's a sneak peek at the thank you stickers I'll be putting on the goodie bag.  I don't think we had a theme for the baby shower, but I'm making one I guess.  Pinwheels.  Because they're cute.  It all started with a banner/sign I made, and it sort of snowballed from there.

When/if I get more pictures I'll post them up.  I probably won't be posting much until after the baby shower on Sunday though.  Hopefully my brother and his wife and everyone else will have fun.

Baby Showers - continued

I went to the store to purchase baby stuff for the baby shower.  I have a few ideas on how to decorate the diaper cake that I'm planning, which will involve lots of ribbon, some pinwheels, and maybe some diaper babies.  I still want to buy MORE stuff though, so hopefully I'll have something that's full of little goodies for the parents and baby :).

Baby Showers!

It's raining babies!!!  Well almost.

I have no idea what's in the water, but there are a TON of babies that have been born in the last year, and will be born in the next few months.  My sister, my sister-in-law (brother's wife), and my other sister-in-law (husband's sister), are all due between September to January.  That's only the family, that doesn't include all of my friends that I know who are also expecting!

On Sunday we have one baby shower, and I've sort of volunteered to help with decorating, food/desserts, and the giveaways.  I don't think I'll be doing a ton of decorations, the shower will be mostly family and close family friends.  Plus, this is the second shower being thrown.  I do want to make a few things at least though.  I'm planning on a banner, and I'm trying to figure out if I want to try out a diaper cake, or something along those lines.  Most of the food will be ordered from near by restaurants, but I will be making some fresh baked pan de sal (bread/rolls).  For desserts my mom has requested broken glass jello, and a fruit salad (not a healthy one either ha ha).  As the giveaway I'll be baking cookies and hopefully making a nice little tag to put on it or something.  I'm not sure if I'll be making anything else.

Now... for presents... I wanted to make a special blanket, matching pillowcase, matching burp cloths, and maybe a soft rattle for them, but I don't know if I'll have time before the shower.  Luckily I already have some made.  I think I'll will make them a different set for when the baby is born :).

Sorry, no photos this post, but I'll try my best to get some of what I do finish!  I will definitely be a busy little bee for this week.

Ginger Chicken

From time to time I will browse and post things to Pinterest, I try to make an effort to at least try a few of the things that I pin, otherwise it's pretty useless for me to spend time doing it.  I suppose if you're just pinning about things you like that's fine, but I try to pin things I would want to try to cook and create, or simply use them as ideas.

This brings me to something I pinned a few days ago, Ginger Chicken.  Strangely enough I found it while I was looking for blueberry lemonade,  I decided that I wanted to try out the recipe since my husband had ordered this really tasty ginger pork at our favorite local Japanese restaurant.  I was thinking if I really like it I can change up the recipe and use pork.  Luckily I had most of the ingredients in stock, I was only missing sake and scallions (which I wanted to omit anyway, first change in recipe).  A shopping trip to a Japanese market fixed the missing sake.  Even though the trip is a bit far (20 or so minutes drive) for one item, my daughter and I were able to enjoy lunch at one of the food shops there :).

Anyway, I ended up almost doubling the recipe since the pack of chicken thighs I got had much more than the recipe called for.  As I was prepping all my ingredients, and letting the chicken sit in the marinade, I decided that I wanted to add some onions to mix with the chicken (second change in recipe).  While I steamed some veggies for a side dish, I sliced half a large onion, making very thin slices.  I thought it might be best to cook them after I finish the first phase of cooking the chicken.  In the end, I liked how everything turned out.  While I did exclude one ingredient, and add another, I think I followed the recipe fairly well (for me, that is).  Definitely watch your temperature, since there's a good amount of sugar with the honey, things can burn if it's too hot.

A bowl of rice, topped with the ginger chicken, steamed veggies (carrots, broccoli, and zucchini), and sesame seeds for garnish.  Yum!

Too all you pinners out there, if you haven't started trying all those awesome things you're putting up on your boards, maybe you should!  Out of my food section I've tried at least 1/3 of all the things I've posted, 5 out of 15 so far.  They won't all be home runs, but you may just find a few gems.  I think I'll be keeping this recipe :).

Stickers, stickers, butterfly stickers.

I purchased a Xyron 5" Creative Station a few months ago.  I was interested in making my own stickers, either for my personal use and/or to sell (I still haven't decided that myself).  I finally decided to break it out of my closet and see how it works.  I've done two test runs on some butterflies (remember these?  except a single layer), and I have to say that I'm pretty happy with the results.  I may experiment and use them somewhere, I just haven't a clue as to where yet.

Now that I can make stickers, will I try to rule the world?  I doubt it.  Will I try to decorate, scrapbook, make cards, tags, and other crafty things?  All signs point to yes!  I may need to share my new power with another crafty friend of mine, I think he'd like it.  Actually, he'd like it more if it were a button maker I think.

Don't be surprised if you all end up with flower stickers next, or something else equally as awesome/lame ha ha.