A very pink intimate babyshower

A few weekends ago, I was part of the decoration team for one of my dearest friend's babyshower. She's having a girl, and since I have a boy, I was very very hungry for pink. And although I'm not a pink-loving kinda gal, having the chance of using it all over the place wasn't something I was able to resist. Per the honoree's request, we tried to keep it low key and simple.



My first task was this diaper cake. My first one ever and I'm so proud. I got compliments from everyone that attended :).. instructions comming soon.



I also made pink pina colada cupcakes with buttercream frosting. They were so yummy and such a hit!



I bought this juice container on clearance at Macy's for $25 and filled it with ice and pink lemonade, we cut slices of lime for a little color. It looked so refreshing and was also a hit!




We did three flower arrangements that we put on each of the tables we had. Simple purple and pink flowers using fish bowls from Michael's with purple glass beads. This fish bowls are so versatile, I've used them over and over again from my engagement party, to my wedding, and other parties. One of the other girls made foam figures and we glued them to wood sticks and placed them among the flowers.






We didn't want a bulky guestbook, so we purchased a frame and mat and put a sonogram picture and had everyone sign it.


Since the honoree is a self proclaimed anti-babyshower woman, and doesn't like games, we bought little shirts and onesies along with fabric paint. Everyone made their own design and she got to keep them for her baby.

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For a tooth!

Yes! My precious little Nick got his very first tooth this past weekend. I'm so excited, not only for his first piece of munchin' equipment, but because he's no longer a crazy fussy baby. Yay for me! It was bad enough that it kept me away from my blog. I did find that teething rings only made him more desperate and upset, frozen washcloths only worked for a very very short period of time, the only road to sanity were teething tablets. OMG! what a miracle! Couldn't have made it without them. Now I'm off to stock up, since my little man has a mouthfull of teeth still to grow.
Therefore, if you see a gazillion posts from me, that's me catching up!

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The fugly crockpot

My husband found this retro beauty at his office today. Since we're all about crockpot lately, he had to take this picture and send it to me!
His exact quote was:
"it's in the kitchen.
Compared to yours...this one is FUGLY and tiny!"

This one looks like it's worth its weight in gold, judging by the wear :)

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Almost meatless Monday

I’ve been reading Cheapskate’s mom blog religiously lately, so I decided to do a test run for meatless Monday. We always eat some sort of meat at every lunch and dinner; and for health and budgeting reasons, a meatless day sounds just perfect.


The Meal: Cajun Alfredo Pasta. (I figured if it’s spicy enough, it will have enough punch to be great without chicken)
So this is the recipe I came up with.


Ingredients
• 1 lb ziti (or your favorite pasta)
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1/8 cup olive oil
• 1 1 16oz bottle of Ragu Classic Alfredo sauce or yo
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
• 1 Cajun seasoning; to taste
• 1 ground black pepper; to taste



Instructions
Pasta (This is how I prepare the pasta, but if you have a different way of preparing the pasta, I'm sure it will work fine):
Cook pasta in water quantity per package instructions, add salt and olive oil to the water and stir constantly. When done, remove water and run pasta through cold water. Add 3 table spoons of olive oil to pasta and stir.


Sauce:
Pour all the Alfredo sauce in a sauce pan over medium heat. Rinse alfredo sauce container with the milk and pour in the sauce pan. Add half of the parmesan cheese in and stir, making sure sauce doesn't stick to the sides of pan. Add cajun seasoning until it reaches a spicy level you like, add pepper. Remove from heat once sauce is hot.
Serve sauce over pasta and sprinkle remaining parmesan cheese over the sauce.



Well, our try at meatless Monday was a fail, by the time the food was served. DH requested a serving of Tyson’s popcorn chicken on top, so we popped the little chicken pieces in the microwave for 2 mins.. and these is what we had: Almost meatless Monday.

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Nicky's first pool party!

I’ve been meaning to post about Nicky turning 3 months for a while. So I figured better late than never. We had a mini spur-of-the-moment celebration; we brought him into the pool for the first time ever, and since it’s our house pool, he just wore shorts and went commando; we had no accidents, well at least we didn’t notice any.
He was quite mellow, didn’t show hate or love towards the pool, I’m glad he wasn’t screaming though. Hopefully, he’ll be more enthusiastic next time around.
It’s incredible how big my little one is getting.

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Making a good picture, truly amazing in Photoshop

I'm somewhat photoshop saavy; I can do a few things here and there, but mostly I play with the settings to see what I come up with. I have tried different soft focus tutorials for photoshop and this one by far is the best I've tried so far: Creating a dream like effect by thedigitalphotographyconnection.com . I took one of my un-retouched professional wedding pictures to see what I could come up with; I was super excited with the results. I absolutely love the final picture; and the tutorial was great and not at all confusing as I have found other tutorials to be. If you have photoshop, this tutorial is a definety must try.

BEFORE



AFTER

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Crockpot mania!

So I succumbed and ordered a crockpot. I purchased a 6qt model with a temperature probe that reminds me of old times in organic chemistry lab, and regardless how others feel, to me those are happy memories. This Hamilton Beach Set 'n Forget 6-Quart Programmable Slow Cooker is great, the probe is not just fancy looking but it works wonders.
So far I’ve only tried cooking two things, cola chicken that I picked up on this recipe at bigoven.com and a whole rotisserie chicken. For the coke chicken I used frozen chicken breasts and I added chopped onions; it was delicious!, I’m so proud. DH loved the chicken, and he’s a picky eater. The whole chicken was great as well, but nothing out of the ordinary, I placed balls of aluminum foil under the chicken to make it more “rotisserie like”; however, it came out a little bit too white, so I popped it in the oven at broiler setting for five minutes to brown and it was perfect.
I’m very excited about the crockpot; all the raves about spending little time in the kitchen are true, absolutely minimal work. And there are tons of recipes online. I love bigoven.com and Stephanie O’Dea’s blog, which is totally amazing, she’s even got recipes for crockpot yogurt!
Next, I’m planning to try meatloaf, let’s see how that comes out.

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