Partied Too Hard

Hello my loyal (and very few) blog readers.  I have been so busy and lazy that I put blogging below cleaning toilets on my to do list.  Basically, I have been partying too much!  You know, the usual 8 month pregnant girl problems.


Tractor birthday parties for Wyatt and Hunter.   Family birthday parties for the 79% of my family that was born in September. 

Birthday boy #1

Birthday boy #2 with a nephew

Bachelorette and bridal showers for my friend Stephanie.

Me making macarons

Stephanie making macarons

We took a Macarons cooking class, we had a lingerie shower, we had dinner, there was a bridal shower.  Lots of fun fun fun!

I did lots of cooking, crafting, and planning over the past few weeks (never thought I would say those words), and I am enjoying being lazy this week.

A few of my labors over the past few weeks:

Make ahead and freeze Funfetti Pancakes for a birthday celebration.  Tasty and cute!

Some amazing make ahead shrimp cocktail to be paired with homemade cocktail sauce.

Also, did you know you can make macaroni and cheese in the crock pot?  It's not as good, but it is still pretty good and you don't have to do any work?!? My sister found a recipe.  Maybe this is it?

Did you know you could buy tractor nail decals on Etsy here?  Well you can, and I packaged them up a bit cute like for a party favor.  I rocked my John Deere and Farmall decals for 2 weeks (including to the bachelorette party)

A few Cricut banners for a bride to be weekend (our color scheme was silver, gold, and white) ...

Some tasty treats...

Swim Suit cookie cutters from Hobby Lobby, this delicious cookie recipe, and this royal icing recipe.  I add some almond extract to the icing.  I piped with a Wilton round tip 4 and 5 and was able to make a few almost decent looking. You can make all of this a week in advance.

Cupcakes with pearls and glitter.  I used the Wilton 12 star tip on these.  I tried 2 home made vanilla cupcake recipes that were sorta flops so I went with a nice box of French Vanilla that turned out pretty tasty.  I iced with this buttercream recipe. 

White chocolate truffles with sprinkles.  I can't remember the exact recipe I used but truffles are so easy and can be made way in advance.  A few things I learned...use paramount crystals to thin your candy melts.  This works much better than shortening and has a better taste.  Also, people prefer Merkens candy melts over whatever you can find at Hobby Lobby.


So that is all!  Hopefully I didn't gain 10 lbs, but I had to eat a lot of mess ups and taste tests.