Stirring Memories: A New Chapter Begins

Sunday, July 27, 2014

A New Chapter Begins

When I agreed to help host a baby shower for my niece Hannah, I immediately knew a children's book theme would be perfect since she is an avid reader. This one was so much fun to plan!

Damaris, Hannah, Jackie, and KK

Even though designing the invitation involved tediously searching and copying each character's image, it was worth it as I was able to reminisce about each one. I re-read many of them. Why not? Even C.S. Lewis said, "A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest."

We asked each party-goer to bring a book to help build a library for Baby Lawson. Anticipating duplicates, I also created a book plate for each person to slip inside instead of writing directly on the book. Surprisingly, I believe there ended up being only one duplicate!

These well-known characters helped shape the menu, and each book was used as table decor, too. And now for the fun part:

For starters, Jackie, Damaris, and I served honey glazed almonds, blue cheese dip and crackers, deviled eggs, and goldfish. Some names were jazzed up a bit, and I made food labels that matched the particular children's book.

The "stinky cheese" dip was a mixture of cream cheese and blue cheese, a layer of pepper jelly, then topped with slivered almonds.

My sister Vicke made her famous deviled eggs. . . dyed green, of course!

For the savory table, we had veggies and several dips, pigs in a blanket (sort of), chicken salad sandwiches, fruit salad, pasta salad, and meatballs.

The meatballs were a hit! Even people who normally said they didn't like meatballs liked these. Damaris didn't use the common recipe with grape jelly. Instead, she mixed a bag of frozen turkey meatballs, one can of cranberry sauce, and one jar of chili sauce, then heated in a crock pot on high for about 3 hours. Yum!

Drinks included bottled water as well as punch.

Jackie made the punch: a mixture of blue Hawaiian Punch, pineapple juice, and Sprite Zero. It was delicious!

The most eye-catching table featured the sweets: cupcakes, homemade butter mints, moon pies, banana bread, red velvet cookies, and gourmet popcorn.

Jackie made and Greg decorated the Hungry Caterpillar cake. It was too cute!

My Aunt Marilyn made the butter mints, and her daughter Cindy formed them into adorable baby bottles. Although this recipe is already in our family cookbook, this was my first time I recall ever having them. Delicious!

This is the same banana bread I've been making for years.

I have posted about these red velvet cookies before, too. Notice the subtle name change. ;)

The gourmet popcorn has pretty much become a staple at our parties now. This recipe is so versatile! It was first introduced by Keely as her Christmas Crunch. I made a pink variation for Buffy's baby shower as well as Hayley's baby shower. Damaris made a blue and gold variation for Natalia's Georgia Southern graduation party. This time, she made a multi-colored version. It got a subtle name change, too.