My Little "Helper"

Midget loves to help in the kitchen.  I can't say that she's always truly helpful, but she sure does have fun when she's there!  Here's a picture taken after making some cupcakes.  Her major contribution to the cupcakes was licking the batter off the beater.  Love those big blue eyes!!

Garden Update

Here's our garden one month apart. The first picture is missing a few plants, but it definitely illustrates what a month can do as far as growth is concerned. We did lose the first cucumber plants we planted to heavy rain, but the new plants have grown faster than anything else in the garden! We have two itty bitty bell peppers, two teensy little jalapenos, and two decent sized cherry tomatoes already!

Baby Shower Candy Buffet

Last month, I was asked to help with a baby shower and ended up being assigned the favors. I had a very strict $40 budget for 25 invitees but wanted to do something fun and fabulous! Candy Buffets are all the rage right now at weddings and I thought I could pull off a small one for less than the $40 I had allocated.

The first place I looked for jars was on Craigslist and found a TON (28 to be exact) of glass jars listed by one person for $15. They looked pretty good in the pictures and I knew I'd be able to use at least 4-5 of them and hopefully only buy one or two more at thrift stores if I needed to. When I picked them up, I quickly realized I wouldn't need any additional jars.

The Mother-to-be knew she was having a girl, so we decided to go with a pink and purple theme, but I also threw white in the mix for the buffet. I visited a few different candy stores to get ideas of the different kinds of candies that would coordinate, but be inexpensive, and provide visual interest.

Once I got the final count of guests, I set about determining how much candy I would need and chose the jars accordingly. I decided on purple wrapped dark chocolate kisses (on sale with a coupon--YAY), Good-N-Plenty candies, some make your own candy bracelets, and some white chocolate dipped pretzel rods sprinkled with pink and purple sugar (homemade by me). The candy total was just over $12, including little treat bags to wrap each pretzel individually!

I ran across the most darling Baby banner on Tricia Rennea's site, which I printed out on card stock. Then, I found a coordinating thank you card on her site, which I shrunk down and printed out on full sheet label paper I already had to attach to the clear treat bags ($2).

So for just shy of $30, this is what the guests were treated to at the shower!