Jessica's Personal Shower/Tea Party

Today was the big day.  Jessica's personal shower was this afternoon, and I must say that it was a success!  I've been baking up a storm the last few days and even purchased a few things that I didn't have time to make.

The spread

The tea bar (for lack of a better term)

The Menu:

• Lavender pound cake
• Lavender tea cookies
• Cucumber mint tea sandwiches
• Basil and hummus tea sandwiches
• Dill cream cheese roll
• Assorted mini-cheesecakes
• Assorted puff pastries
• Assorted teas
• Earl grey lavender tea
• Mandarin orange green tea
• Island mango and peach white tea
• Regular green tea
• Akbar, Polish black tea
• Lemon bars
• Assorted mini-scones

I think we had a pretty good selection.  We didn't really have too much leftover.  It helped that the guest of honor took home the rest of the tea sandwiches and some cookies.  My mom also brought home some goodies for my dad. 

I'm sure you noticed the two menu options that are crossed out.  Well...not everything always turns out like I'd hope.  I attempted to make some lemon bars Friday evening.  Huge fail!  I'll have to try again some other time because lemon bars are so yummy.  The assorted mini-scones were also a huge fail.  I never even entertained the idea of trying to make them myself.  My plan from the start was to run to Panera Bread the morning of the shower and pick up a batch.  When I arrived at Panera this morning, I didn't see any mini-scones displayed.  I waited in line thinking, "Maybe they just haven't been put out yet..."  Nope.  Apparently Panera decided to discontinue making their mini-scones daily...TWO days ago.  Ugh.  You can still get them, but you have to call in the order a day ahead of time.  Boo.  My next stop was Gordon Food Service to buy something to replace the scones with.  I ended up with the assorted mini-cheesecakes and puff pastries.

Please check back for the first recipe I'll post which will be the lavender pound cake.  I was a little sceptical, but I think it was my favorite menu item today!  It would even be great without the lavender.  I might have to make it for strawberry shortcake.

I will leave you tonight with a photo of me and the bride-to-be.  :)

Thanks, Jess, for letting me throw you a shower.  I had a wonderful time putting it all together.

And a special thank you to my mother who helped me out today.  She refilled the tea pot when needed, got the guests their drinks, helped clean up, and basically let me not only be the host of the tea, but a guest as well.  Thanks, mom!

You Say Goodbye and I Say Hello

I always think of that Beatles' song when the Miss Wayne County Pageant comes around.  We say goodbye to last year's titleholder and hello to this year's.

The pageant was last night, and we crowned Sarah Suydam, a Wayne State University student from St. Clair Shores.  Goodbye, Anjel Francisco.  We loved having you as our Miss Wayne County.  Best of luck to you in California.  Hello, Sarah.  We're so happy to have you join our pageant family.  It's going to be another good year!

Now that the pageant is over, Swiss steak is cooking in my slow cooker for dinner, and brownies are made for dessert, I have a moment to post that pasta salad recipe I promised about a week ago.  I got this recipe from the Miss Wayne County Executive Director, so it seems fitting that it's in this post.  We both are pretty simple eaters and love us some fat-free Italian salad dressing.  :)  Without further ado...

Sheila's Pasta Salad

Ingredients:

• 1 16 oz. box of pasta (I used tri-color rotini)
• dash Kosher salt, if desired
• 1 can of Italian style diced tomatoes
• 1 large cucumber, cut into chunks
• 1/2-3/4 bottle of Italian dressing
• dash garlic powder or garlic salt
• dash dried parsley

Directions:

1. Cook pasta as directed on box. Add kosher salt to water, if desired.
2. Mix can of tomatoes with pasta. Add cucumbers. Refrigerate.
3. Add italian dressing. Add garlic salt and parsley to taste. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
4. Top with dried parsley for presentation.

It's so easy to make, and so tasty!

This Saturday is the tea party/personal shower I'm throwing for my friend Jessica.  I will have lots of tea party-like food recipes to post next week.  Please check back for those and some photos from the party!

It's Peanut Butter Jelly Time

Okay, not jelly, just peanut butter.  Well, some chocolate too.  :)

It's time for another cookie post!

To celebrate the end of summer, my hubby and I decided to have a little Labor Day family BBQ.  We had the normal hot dogs, Polish sausage, and hamburgers that you usually have at a BBQ, along with baked beans and potato salad bought by our mothers.  I wanted to make something that I haven't blogged about yet, so I decided on peanut butter cookies and pasta salad.  In this post, you'll find the peanut butter cookie recipe...if you hadn't figured that out yet.  Stay tuned for pasta salad in an upcoming post.

Peanut Butter Cookies

Once again, I used my trusty Betty Crocker cookbook for this recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 cups Gold Medal® all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup peanut butter chips
• Granulated sugar
• Melting chocolate or chocolate chips, if desired

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 375°F.  In large bowl, beat brown sugar, peanut butter, butter and egg with electric mixer on medium speed until creamy, or mix with spoon.  Stir in flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  Stir in peanut butter chips.
2. Shape dough into 1 1/2-inch balls.  Dip tops of balls into granulated sugar.  Place balls, sugared sides up, about 3 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet (do not flatten).
3. Bake cookies 9 to 10 minutes or until light brown.  Cool 5 minutes; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.
4. If desired, in a microwave-safe bowl, heat melting chocolate or chocolate chips at increments of 30 seconds until chocolate is melted.  Dip one end of each cookie into chocolate.  Place on a sheet of wax paper and let stand about 30 minutes or until chocolate is set.

My absolute all-time favorite cookie is a Mrs. Field's peanut butter cookie dipped in chocolate.  It's a rare treat I allow myself to get at the mall.  These rival them.  Honestly, they're so good.  It might be a bad thing that I can make them myself now...

What I've Been Up To

I definitely haven't been cooking.  That's for sure!

It's pageant season, and that means my days have been filled with stuff for Miss Wayne County.  I am the official tech/graphics/web person for the pageant and with our 2010 program only eight days away, I've been a little swamped.

Here's a sneak peak at what I've been working on:

It's our program book cover.  I'll post the entire program once the pageant has taken place.  I know some of my pageant friends check my blog, so I don't want to ruin the program book unveiling.  Actually, the book is pretty much the same year-after-year, but we did add a few new things for this year. 

I took over putting the program together last year when our printer retired.  It's a little more work than I expected, but nothing I can't handle.  Honestly, I really do enjoy doing this, and it saves our program money by not having an outside source do the graphics part.  I think I missed my calling somewhere.  Why didn't I major in graphic design or something?  Imagine what I could do if I actually knew what I was doing.  Ah...the possibilities.  Oh well, I do what I can and enjoy it!

We also started a Princess Program fundraiser this year, so that's been added to my plate as well.  So far, I must say that's it's been a definite worthwhile fundraiser.  The girls are ADORABLE, and we've been able to beef-up the scholarships we're giving out this year.  A winner for all involved!

This coming Wednesday we are having a tea party for our princesses.  Stay tuned for photos from that!

In addition to all of that, I'm also in charge of our website.  I started the site about five years ago as a surprise for our executive director.  To say it has evolved would be an understatement.  When I think about what it looked like when I started and what it looks like now, I'm pretty amazed.  I've learned so much in the process.  Although, I know I still have a lot to learn.  This is where I thank companies, namely Weebly, who make things so much easier for me.  They allow us to have a pretty darn professional looking website with minimal headaches on my end.  :)

So that's what I've been up to.  Pageants aren't all glitz and glamour.  There's so much that happens behind the scenes that I never even thought about when I was competing.  I love giving back to this organization that gave so much to me.

You are invited...

to a tea party! 

It's official.  The guest of honor has received her invite in the mail, so let the posting commence!

Now, I can't take full credit for the design. While searching Google Images for "tea party invitations," I stumbled upon an invite that got my creative juices flowing. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find that site again.

To make the invites, I used my trusty Paint Shop Pro (since I don't have Photoshop), Google Images (to search for the lavender clip art), leftover envelopes from our wedding, and cardstock that I picked up at JoAnn Fabrics.  Gotta love those 40% off coupons!

I printed two invites per 8.5" x 11" page, used my paper cutter and an exacto knife to cut them out, and my bone folder to help create crisp folds.  The final invite dimensions before folding was 3" x 10". 

To attach the tea bag, I used my new favorite gadget, the Tiny Attacher by Tim Holtz.  I then used my exacto knife to almost completly cut out the square under the flap like a real tea bag would be.

I didn't think I'd ever love an invitation that I made myself more than our wedding invites, but this one comes in at a very close second place!

Here's one final look at all the parts of the invite...with all personal information removed of course!  :)

I'm so excited...

...and I just can't hide it any longer.  :)

I'm so in love with the invitations for Jessica's personal shower, and I'd REALLY like to show them to you.  However, I haven't mailed them yet.  It's probably best that the guest of honor and her guests receive the invites first before I post them for the entire world to see.

With that being said...here's a sneak preview:

I can't wait to post the finished project!

Tea for two and two for tea

In the upcoming weeks, I will be posting about tea.  A tea party to be exact!

My friend, Jessica (from Healthy Obsessions of a Girly Tomboy), is getting married in just about two months!  A while back she mentioned that she really wanted a tea party for her shower.  Unfortunately, that wasn't in the cards, so I offered to throw her a personal shower - tea party style.  Two of my friends threw me a personal shower before I got married, and I had such a good time.  I knew this would be the perfect type of tea party to throw for Jess.

What's a personal shower, you ask?  It's a chance to shower the bride with all the lingerie and personal items she will need as a bride.

I've been working on the invitation for sometime now.  I promise to post it once they've been mailed.  I can't take full credit for the design.  I may or may not have taken the idea from someone else, but I still think they are quite adorable and have no problem patting myself on the back a little...  :)  I'm seriously in love them.

We worked on the menu a little bit today.  Think cucumber sandwiches, lavender cookies, madeleines, scones, etc...  Oh and you better believe I'll be blogging about each and every menu item!  I'm looking forward to baking with lavender.  One of Jessica's wedding colors is lavender, so I decided to take that and run with it.

Speaking of the menu...have any of you out there ever thrown a tea party or attended one?  What did you have to eat?  Did you enjoy one thing more than others?