Boogers on the Wall

Author’s note: If you are looking to read about a major mishap, check back next week. I am sure something crazy will happen in the next 6 days and I’ll blog about a failed adventure. But last week I actually did something right. Since that doesn’t happen very often, I’m dying to share.

Thank heavens people invent crafting helpers for the homemaking impaired. Otherwise I would not have been able to help with my future sister-in-law’s bridal shower last weekend.

Luckily Internet search engines and my mom’s new cake-pop maker saved the day.

My mother-in-law held a bridal shower last Saturday for my brother-in-law’s fiancé, Aubrey. I was in charge of putting together a treat and some games.

My mom got a Babycakes Cake Pop Maker for Christmas and I had been dying to try it out. So the day before the shower I busted the thing open and dove right in.

Can I just say, piece of cake?

I had heard horror stories of people baking cakes, crumbling them up only to roll the mess back together with a slab of frosting or cream cheese.

Not in this kitchen.

The Babycakes waffle-iron styled machine helped me whip up some cake balls in no time. The maker came with an instruction brochure that included simple recipes. I tried out the vanilla one – mainly because I had all of the ingredients on hand in my kitchen.

It was easy! With only a handful of ingredients and my 4-year-old’s expert stirring skills, we were good to go.

I tried to pour a tablespoon full of batter into the non-stick rounded out wells, but that made a mess. So I did what I had read online and filled a Ziploc bag with batter, cut a small tip off the end of the bag and squeezed the remainder of the batter into the maker.

It took about four minutes for a dozen cake balls to golden up. I thought they were beautiful!
 
I doubled the recipe and less than an hour later I ended up with just shy of 100 cake balls.

I frosted the pops later that night after my kids were in bed.

I stuck the lollipop sticks up to about an inch in candy melt then put one pop on each. Then I took them outside in my van and let them sit in the freezing cold weather for 15 minutes.

I brought them back in and dipped them into more candy melt until they were covered. This was the hardest part for me. I lost a couple of the pops as they plopped off of the stick into the frosting. That was fun.

I topped some of the pops with ice cream sprinkles and left some of them plain. Not because I wanted to, but I ran out of frosting. And although I didn’t think they looked very good, my husband said those were his favorite.

I printed and cut out some pennant-style tags to glue to the sticks to make them more festive. They read: Be Marry, Together Forever and Love Me

It took a little longer to frost the pops than I thought it would. I was planning on running and picking up a bridal shower gift after the pops were done, but by the time I was done I didn’t feel like going out. Not to mention the fact that most of the stores would have been closed anyway.

So, I came up with a “honeymoon fund” jar with a couple of things I had around the house. I saw a couple of these jars on Pinterest and thought they were really cute.

My neighbor gave me a few 2-quart mason jars a couple of years ago. Since I don’t can with jars that big they were collecting dust in my basement. I took one of the jars, cleaned it out and created a tag to tie on the outside. I used some tule, that I also had in my basement, to tie the tag near the top.

On my way to the shower I stopped at the bank and got some change to put in the bottom.

Now on to the games….

I got this first idea from a friend. You can check out her baby-shower version here.

I cut out white wedding dresses onto cardstock with my Silhouette machine. Then hung them with tiny clothespins onto a ribbon.

The dresses had the bride and groom’s names with their wedding dates on top. On the bottom I left space for people to write advice for the bride-to-be. I typed up four different prompts to get them started.

The dresses read:
I hope you’re not afraid of …
I hope you laugh at …
Make sure to never …
Make sure to always …

While people were mingling and eating they were able to write their thoughts then pin the dresses back up. At the end of the shower Aubrey read them aloud.

We also played the purse game found here. I was quite shocked when my husband’s aunt single-handedly scored 196 points, blasting out the competition. She impressed all of us by having earplugs in her bag. She won “100 Grand” to put in her purse.

Next we played a fill-in-the blank, mad libs-type game found here. It was really fun to see what fruits and vegetables people would come up with to fill in the letter.

Lastly we played a bridal-shower version of a dice game. I wrapped 20 dollar store kitchen gadgets and placed them in a pile in the middle of the floor. We sat in a circle, taking turns rolling the dice. If someone rolled doubles, they chose a present from the middle.

After everyone had a present we each unwrapped what we had before starting the next round.

During the next round we rolled the dice for five minutes and if people got doubles they could trade their gadget with someone else’s. It was fun to watch people switch the small trinkets back and forth. Who knew measuring spoons and metal can strainers would be so popular?

Anyway, the shower was a huge success. It was fun to get to know my future sister-in-law better and it gave me a chance to practice my mad crafting skills. Even if I used the help of a cake-pop maker and the Internet to made it all happen!

Aubrey and me!