Imatjen

I had a baby shower for my bestest friend Lisa.  I have known Lisa since 6th grade.  Her mom and my mom split car pooling to private school.  Years later I ran into her at one of our favorite restaurants and our baby girls are a month apart in age and the best of friends too!

Lisa and Jeff are expecting a little boy.  She picked an awesome bedroom set for this little tyke.  Check this out: 

Baby Boy Lisa

So with that in mind, I set out to find colors to match her theme. 

Often times I have a very creative mind, getting it out of my mind and on paper or making the idea real, sometimes does not coincide. 

This time I lucked out. I went to a craft whole saler and found these awesome blue and white polka dot, chinese, carry out containers, I bought blue and white candy meltdown chips to make candy coated apples.  I found blue jimmies and assorted sprinkles. 

We played three games: 

Game one:  Present the guests with a tray of baby goodies, have the Mom to be parade the tray around for guests.  Then have Mom disappear behind closed doors and have everyone write down in detail what Mom is wearing. 

Game two:  Guess how many safety pins were in the box.

Game three: This is my favorite and a game my mom introduce to me and my friends when I turned about 9 or 10.  You blind fold the player and give them a bowl of cotton balls, you give them a wooden spoon and tell them to spoon cotton balls into a separate bowl that is balanced on their head.  The other guests beging counting to 10.  The person that gets the most cotton balls in the other bowl that is balanced on their head wins. 

In addition, I made Lisa a Diaper Cake! 

Grandma, and Grandpa (aka Bopaw) surprised G with a pizza dinner and some awesome tween presents that G was in love with. 

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G insisted on Monkey invites from Target but then also wanted a spa party.  So how does Mom plan a spa party and tie in the monkey theme and not spend a million dollars:  Check it out! 

Once the invites were sent, I was on a mission to pull off this Monkey spa party.  I went to Justice and found Monkey PJ's for G, then stopped by the dollar store and picked up a 3-pack of glitter and 6 feather boa's for G and her buddies.  I borrowed one chocolate fountain from my work, and purchased a bag of pretzel rods, marshmallows, cupcake mix, icing, Nilla wafers in regular and mini size, a bag of flour, and a six cup bag of mozzarella cheese.  I also picked up a bag of frozen dinner rolls and a box of instant butterscotch pudding.  I made a phone call to my very talented teenage neices and told them to bring curling irons, nail polish, and make up. 

The night before I baked funfetti cupcakes and iced with chocolate icing.  I reserved funfetti sprinkles for chocolate dipped pretzel rods.

Once cupcakes were iced, I positioned Nilla Wafers to make a monkey face and then iced each one to resemble a face.  I got out the Kitchen Aid mixer and made an individual pizza crust for each girl and a big one for Hubby, myself, and neices. I prebaked them. 

Guests arrived at 3:30pm and the girls broke out the karaoke machine and began singing away. Then they decided to do presents right away.  When everyone got hungry.  I put out a jar of pizza sauce, pepperoni, and all the mozzarella cheese they could grab.  Since I pre-baked the crust, we only had to stick the pizza's backin the over for about 8 minutes each.  

For an elegant punch, I took Black cherry Kool aid and added a bag of frozen fruit.  The punch bowl added the elegance factor.   

I made up party bags to go by stopping by  http://www.shopjustice.com/ They have an accessory area where everything was 3 for $5. and I also had a 40% off coupon.  Yay! Bonus.  I found monkey shaped soap, and monkey note pads, and cotton candy lip gloss.  I found treat bags at the dollar store.  I splurged and bought each girl a bath fizzy at  www.sweetandsassy.com

My neices fixed everyone's hair, nails, and makeup.  We dusted everyone with glitter and in the morning we had "Monkey Bread".  To make monkey bread you take a bundt pan, spray it with non-stick cooking spray, add frozen dinner rolls, sprinkle with instant butterscotch pudding mix, a 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/2 stick of melted butter, and 1/2 cup of brown sugar.  Put in oven and forget about it until morning.  The rolls will rise overnight.  Cook at 375 for 30 minutes.  Sticky, Yummy, Monkey bread. 

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G Turned 10 on September 24th.  To celebrate her birthday we went to http://www.daveandbusters.com/  We had an absolute blast.  We all enjoyed the trivia, skee ball, race car driving, air hockey and winning tickets.  G got to take home a stuffed pink poodle and Baby M got a pink kitty cat that she sleeps with every night now. 

When we got ready to leave, we all had our fortune told by the mechanical gypsy.

My husband took all of us to http://www.mollywoos.com/  it was fantastic! 

I started off with a Sake' sampler, the only thing is Baby M thought the one glass was milk and grabbed at it and shattered the whole display.  We then had sushi, lettuce wraps, and I enjoyed a vegetarian eggplant dish, while M had Sesame Chicken, G had Cashew Chicken, and J had Pineapple Chicken.  It was fantastic!

My Mom and Dad took me and the whole family out to breakfast at http://www.firstwatch.com/ .  It was so delicious.  I got the Crepe Eggs which are my favorite.  The avocado on it just hits the spot. 

My birthday happens to be usually the first day of school and Baby M is the last day of school.

For my Birthday, Baby M cooked me a plastic egg in her play kitchen and served it to me in bed. 

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