Oops! I didn't post this in time. Brayden is here! But just for the sake of chronological order, I still put this up because I had it almost ready when he popped out, er, made his appearance. Baby introduction post coming soon!
This blog is quickly turning into an on-line scrapbook for me. I am going to try to put in some useful information between my ramblings about my family, so look really hard.
I am in a race against time, because my daughter is nearing her due date and is actually having some signs of possible impending labor. I am furiously typing up this shower post because is simply MUST come before the baby introduction post. As my daughter keeps me abreast of all twitches, contractions, and mucosal changes, I'm going to try to complete this with all the linky-links and recipes that I have promised to the ones who have asked me.
Get ready to say "awwwww" a lot. It's all about babies and cuteness from here on out at Rice and Beans.
A big thank you goes to my sister-in-law, Tamara, for letting us hold our little get-together at her home. Thanks, Tamara! You're the best!
For Amber's shower I really wanted to "put on the dog," as they say here in the South, although expressions like this are not part of my every day vocabulary. I was born out West and lived there until I was fourteen. Since Southern colloquialisms are engrained in children from a much earlier age, such idioms do not roll out of my mouth easily. That is why my Alabama-born husband pointed out to me one day that I call my father "Dad" whereas everyone here calls their father "Daddy", pronounced more like "Deddy." Because I like to think of myself as a real Southerner, these "enlightenments," or gentle reminders that I was not born here, really hurt. Anyway, I'd like to say today, for effect only, that I did "put on the dog" for my daughter's shower. I really enjoy cooking, baking, and entertaining, and since I mostly paid for it to be done for me at her wedding, I felt she was due for her mother to go all out. And all out is what I did. My sweet mother helped me out, which is a good thing, because I would have been dead by the end of baby shower week.
For starters, we wanted cake and we wanted it big, so that is what we did. Three tiers high. Strawberry cake with fresh strawberry buttercream filling on the bottom tier, vanilla cake with cookies and cream buttercream filling on the top tiers. Vanilla buttercream covered the whole thing and we decorated with fondant, both chocolate and and white fondant that was dyed a pale blue and pale green.
The bow looks black, but it's really chocolate brown. Aside from some slight bulging issues, it didn't turn out half bad for our very first decorated cake.
Now, I know that not everyone likes layered cake with frosting, so a great alternative to layered cake with frosting is cake balls, which is cake mixed with frosting, then rolled into balls. We like to have variety at our showers.
Look at these adorable little cookies I made for favors:
When I saw these "onsie" cookies posted at Peanut Butter and Julie a few months ago, I just knew I had to make them. The only problem I ran into was dying the royal icing a dark enough brown for the outline. I could never get it past a tan color, so I outlined in melted chocolate instead. That worked out fine, but I had to take great pains to keep them cool so the chocolate wouldn't melt. I'll have to ask Julie if there is a trick for dying royal icing a dark color, because I just couldn't get it right. The recipe is right here. Thank you, Julie!
If you ever make my tortilla toffee recipe, try using white chocolate chips and dry roasted macadamia nuts as an alternative topping. I really like it better than the original, I think.
Remember my CATME series and the second P which is a well-stocked pantry? Well, thank the good Lord that I follow my own advice. A well-stocked pantry comes in really handy when you wake up in a cold sweat at 4:00 AM on the morning of the shower and you realize that, DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN, you have NO CITRUS on the menu, and *oh, my holy heavens* the shower will JUST BE RUINED if you don't have citrus of some kind!!! Needless to say, my well-stocked pantry always has a bottle of lime juice and I was able to throw together some lime bars, because goodness knows that there was not enough sweet things to eat, ONLY the cake, and the cake balls, and the tortilla toffee and the fruit and the marshmallowy fruit dip. It's not a shower 'til someones blood sugar level hits 300, I always say.
This is the diaper cake my mother made. When we were brainstorming about shower ideas, I sent her a link from You Tube about how to make a diaper cake and asked her if she could possibly be in charge of this aesthetic work of art. She took one look at the video and said "I'm all over the diaper cake. Let me handle it." The next thing I knew, we had diaper cake. I love it when I can delegate jobs!
You see this big, beautiful jar? Everyone seemed to love this so here is a link to where to buy one. This jar with a spicket is a great alternative to a punch bowl. Everyone can walk by and fill up their cups themselves. We had one full of iced coffee and another full of mango punch. Recipes at the end of this post.
We had real food, too, not just sugar. Two kinds of sandwiches: roast beef, provolone, and pesto on foccocia and also, chicken salad. We even had hot artichoke and sundried tomato dip with pita chips, and marinated cheese and olives.
Here's my girl right here.
She doesn't look anything like I did when I was pregnant with her. She glows and looks all dewy and fresh and illuminated. Or at least she was glowing before she got PUPPS. Now she is bright red and itchy, pretty much all over her body. But before the appearance of this pregnancy-related rash, she glowed. I, however, was a scary monster when I was pregnant. See:
Lorie Roach, 1989
The eighties were cruel to me. I feel like I need to put a disclaimer underneath this photo.
Let's move on, shall we?
This is the softest, plushest, cutest stuffed animal ever. You can find it at Out of the Toy Box which is a really cool place to buy all kinds of unique, fun, and educational toys for children. I know I'm going to be doing a lot of shopping there in the coming years for my little pumpkin head.
When the happy couple was trying to reach an agreement about what colors and patterns they would decorate the baby's room in, they kind of locked heads a little bit. He wanted camouflage for his little baby boy, she did not. I searched and searched and you are NOT going to believe what I found on-line: YES, a BABY DEER CRIB SET in CHOCOLATE BROWN AND GREEN!!!! Everyone is happy now!
Vanilla Iced Coffee
1/3 cup instant coffee granules
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup boiling water
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
2 cups cold water
4 cups fat-free milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Place the coffee granules and sugar in a bowl and stir in the boiling water until dissolved.
Whisk in the sweetened condensed milk and 2 cups cold water until combined.
Pour the milk into a pitcher. Stir in the coffee mixture and 1 tablespoon vanilla. Chill in fridge for about an hour. Serve over ice.
4 cups sugar
