Berry sweet baby shower

Last Friday, I drove up to Idaho to throw a baby shower for my wonderful sister Kristen, who is due to have a baby girl this August. It was so much work, but so much fun! I had been pinning ideas on Pinterest for months, and thinking nonstop about the cakes, invitations, and decorations that I wanted to do. We were working up until the last second getting everything prepared, and everything turned out beautifully. 

The color palette for the shower evolved with every craft I undertook for it. The first thing I did was make a cute flower crown for Kristen to wear during the shower and her maternity pictures. I loved the combination of reds, pinks, purples, and the silvery green eucalyptus and decided to incorporate them into the invitations as well.

I ordered these from zooprinting.com and chose the linen paper and rounded corners. Zoo printing is a great and inexpensive option for anyone who is looking to order invites online. Everything I have ordered from them was great quality. Word of advice though, they can take up to two weeks to get your project back to you! Therefore, the invitations ended up getting out a little late. We still had a good turnout though.

This little table of food looks so simple, but it was honestly the result of days of work and weeks of planning!  I have been loving the naked cake trend, and I decided that I wanted to have one at Kristen's baby shower. And because I am always looking for the least expensive way to do things, I decided to make them all myself.  The dilemma though, was how to bake them all in time, decorate them, and get them to the baby shower in a different state than where I live.

My coworker told me of a good trick, just make it ahead of time and freeze it!  She said that they are easier to cut and frost that way anyways.  So I spent two nights baking and cooking up the filling on the inside.  I made a lemon cake (Duncan Hines!) with lemon curd filling, buttercream frosting, and blueberries as a garnish. And for the other two cakes I made dark chocolate fudge (Duncan Hines!) with triple berry filling and buttercream frosting.

A few words of advice about making cake that I learned:

• Just use oil. Don't try to go healthy and do applesauce because it gets a little too dry when you freeze it.  
• Also, when you freeze the cake, let it sit in the fridge for about 2 hours to cool down before wrapping it up tight in saran wrap for storage.
• If you are making a filling that calls for cornstarch, 2 tablespoons is too little, and 6 is way too much. Also, cornstarch kind of makes things bland the more you add.
• If you are making a naked cake for the first time, watch some youtube videos before trying it out. I watched these two and they were super helpful: 
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_M2Uk6QNkY
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yU9s7--nx4
• Get the right supplies.  I purchased springform pans, cardboard cake plates, a long & straight frosting spatula, frosting tubes (I'm so tired right now I can't think of what they're called!) and a few other things. All were extremely useful.  One thing I wish I had purchased: a lazy susan.
• Give yourself a LOT of time to bake, cut and frost the cakes!  For each cake I probably spent 5 hours total.

But they turned out so cute that it was all worth it!

This recipe for a cheesecake fruit dip was delicious - I just added a little bit of lemon juice

Kristen made these delicious & simple danishes with cream cheese and rhubarb filling.

Me and my sweet sister!

Kristen's mother-in-law was so awesome and helped out with the games & activities.  She had everyone guess how many sugar babies were in a jar, and we all guessed which celebrities named their children these different crazy names.

I set up a little hair flower station for guests to create headbands for the future baby phillips. It was fun to see what people came up with!

As a thank-you gift for coming, Kristen filled some white paper bags with fresh strawberries and cherries. I thought it was such a great idea!  Especially after everyone stuffed their faces with so much junk food, it was nice to have something healthy to take home.

William's "cheese" face

My nephew William (and the future big brother-to-be) showed up at the end to help us clean up.  He was a little confused about who to hand some of the stuff to, so he kept throwing stuff away instead!  He is such a cute little handful, baby girl Phillips is going to be lucky to have such a fun & entertaining big brother!