Hayley's Baby Shower

A dear friend of mine had a baby shower at my house today, and it was a lot of fun. We decided to do a brunch since it was held on a Saturday morning, and I lucked out that some family members decided to bring a few things too.

I started off trying to make cake balls. I had very high hopes for this endeavor. Since the colors of Jackson's room are green, blue, and orange, I made the shower in those colors. My plan was to make some beautifully shaped orange and chocolate cake balls. I was going to use white almond bark and then drizzle orange across the top of some, and blue across the top of the others. Things turned south pretty much immediately. The cake took much longer to bake than expected, and the very middle of the orange cake was still soggy when it cooled, so I took that part out and threw it away. Then I mixed the cake and icing together. The website said to use a whole can of icing, so I did. BIG mistake! The cake was WAY too sticky, and I had to spray my hands with Pam after every other cake ball. This was way too much stress for a hormonal pregnant woman who is always concerned about her cooking skills anyway. Luckily, my mom was there with me, and she finished forming the balls.

We decided to freeze them so that they would be easier to dip.

On Thursday night before the shower, I pulled them out of the freezer and began to dip them in the almond bark. They looked awful! Definitely NOT like the pictures. They were lumpy, and the orange ones were SO sticky that they wouldn't even come off the fork. (That's why there are weird fork holes in the second picture.)Since the cake balls turned out, well...let's be honest here...they looked terrible, I decided to order cupcakes from a local bakery owned by a former student's mom. Usually I like her cupcakes, but these weren't my fave. A few people wanted to see, and try, the rejects cake balls, and said that they were delicious. I think the texture is too soggy. I do wish I had only bought one dozen cupcakes thought since we only went through 12, and they weren't cheap. Oh well...they definitely made the table pretty.Luckily, Jackson's room matched Witten's first birthday party, so I was able to use all of the blues and greens from that event, and I only had to buy a couple of packs of napkins and some orange forks and streamers.My gift to Hayley was a custom made diaper cake from the baby business I have started up with my mom, Funky Bug Designs. And here's Hayley opening what I think was her FAVORITE present because it came from Neiman Marcus. It was a really cute diaper bag.