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Entertaining

Entertaining, Recipes

Recipe Wednesday – Christmas Party Edition

We hosted a Christmas Party last week for friends and I wanted to share some of the recipes that I made.  Most of the food was catered but I did contribute a few things!

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White Chocolate Covered Cranberries

Tips:
These were very hard for me to dip into the chocolate before my white chocolate started burning.  So I ended up just mixing them all into the chocolate and then breaking them apart.  Not the prettiest, but they still tasted good.  My kids loved them so this might be a good way to get the superfood in them with just a little chocolate!

Georgia Pralines

Tips:
A very easy recipe that is really good.  I might use more pecans next time because my pralines seemed to be light on the pecans.  And I think I let them cool too much in the pan before putting on the wax paper to cool because mine didn’t fall into what I think of as the typical praline shape.

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Sugar Cookie Cheesecake Bites

Tips:
I made this in regular sized muffin pans and in a mini muffin pan and I preferred the small ones.  The small ones were especially good for a party because you could pick one up and pop the whole thing in your mouth.  In the mini cups you will probably only use 1/4 to 1/3 of a thin slice of dough for the bottom.  I ended up rolling my dough into a ball and then pressing it into the bottom of the cup with my thumb.  Even with that small amount of dough you might have to tap the pan to the oven top to have the dough fall down into the cup so that you have room to put the cheesecake.  These really were a hit though and look way nicer than they actually are!

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White Chocolate Cinnamon Sugar Pretzels

Tips:
Another HUGE hit that got rave reviews.  It’s a fairly straightforward recipe that I did basically as directed and they turned out great.  Just be prepared that you will have a lot of sugar come off as the pretzels sit so be prepared for a mess on your counter!

Edamame Salad

Tips:
I didn’t try this but saw a lot of people eating it at the party.  I think it was good for a healthy-ish dish on the table although I was disappointed in how it presented.  Maybe it needed more cranberries and feta?

Black Bean and Red Pepper Salad

Tips:
This recipe was hard because it called for the avocado to go in right before serving which put me in a tizzy right before guests arrived.  But I don’t think I should have worried as much.  With the lime juice in it, my avocado’s are still green even the next day in the salad so I wouldn’t worry at how much time it too much before serving to add the avocado’s.

Vegetable Dip

Tips:
This veggie dip was great and was very easy!

Entertaining, Family

Beep! Beep! James’ 2nd Birthday

Over the summer James has become obsessed with machinery.  It started out with just cars but has since expanded to trucks, buses, tractors, planes, trains…basically anything with an engine that moves.  So when I was searching for a theme for his birthday, I decided that we couldn’t go wrong with cars.  I had a lot of fun designing his invitations and the accents like menu cards, thank you’s, a plate, and a t-shirt.  I was excited to finally see it all in action for his party at our house!

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I stuck with a simple decorating plan..spread his beloved trucks and planes throughout the house.  I also got a few balloons which ended up being a big hit also!

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After James got a birthday crown at school the day before his birthday he was ecstatic about his birthday.  When I asked him a few weeks before his birthday what he wanted for his birthday he quickly replied “CAKE!” so I knew that the cake had to be a priority.  I went back to Cakes, Etc where we had gotten his one year old caterpillar cake and asked for a sheet cake.  I didn’t even specify how to decorate it but just sent her the invitation and let her be inspired from it.  And it turned out perfectly!

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By the time guests started arriving James was beside himself with excitement.  We decided to break out the outdoor toys to give everyone a chance to see he and Charlotte play outside.  It was a touch cooler that evening which was nice but it was still hotter than I would have liked.  But since we just invited family over and they rarely get to see the kids in their own space doing their own thing, I think it was still a hit for them to get to watch C & J enjoy the outdoors!

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We came inside to eat dinner that we had catered from Taziki’s.  I’m so glad that a friend (thanks Lindsey!) pushed me to try Taziki’s a number of years ago.  Their food is so wonderful and I feel like it’s so much healthier for me than regular fast food.  The chicken roll ups and roasted potato salad was a huge hit for all ages at our party!  And just an FYI, the large chicken roll up platter that it says will feed 20-24 people, fed our 30 people with enough for me to eat it for lunch the rest of the week too!

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After we ate we brought out the cake.  James wasn’t sure what we were doing singing to him, but he was sure that he wanted to eat some!

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And then it as time to open presents which might have been my favorite part of the night because James got SO EXCITED about EVERYTHING!  He hated to put a present away to open another one but as soon as he opened a new one he was just as excited about it!  Our families were so generous and he and Charlotte have been playing with new things ever since then!

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Hopefully you can tell from James’ happy dance in this picture how excited he was the whole night! 🙂

As people left I had 4×6 pictures from our most recent Erin Cobb session for people to take home as a party favor.  It was the least I could do and I figured that our family would appreciate a recent picture more than a matchbox car.

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Even though he spent the entire party trying to do a backflip every time I tried to take a picture with him, by the end of the party his sugar had worn off and he was just exhausted enough to give Mama what she’d been wanting a day…a picture with her sweet, handsome, grown up birthday boy!

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Entertaining

Very Hungry Caterpillar Party Details

I was very happy with the way the invitation turned out.  The back side of it looks a little off since I took off all of our identifying information before putting it on the blog, but the caterpillar with pictures was so cute!  I got the idea from an invitation that I designed for one of our friends little girls’ birthday party over the summer.
We continued the tradition of having our guests sign a copy of Dr. Suess’ Happy Birthday To You for James.  My hope is that when they’re grown they’ll look back fondly on the well wishes written from their family and think about how loved they were then and now.

I loved the strawberry cake that I had made for James.  The inspiration was from my Pinterest board.

I love the cute lantern caterpillar that greeted guests in the foyer!  I got the supplies at Party City and just made copies of the caterpillar pieces that I had already made for James’ banner.

I did a birthday banner with all Charlotte’s monthly pictures also but I LOVE the way it looks as a caterpillar!  I just free-handed the caterpillar details and it still turned out really cute.

I continued the birthday plate tradition by getting Paper Doll Designs to create a plate using the caterpillar graphic that I created for the invitations.  It turned out precious!

James’ smash cake was a huge hit.  He basically pulled the green caterpillar off and ate it first before digging into the actual cake!
To see pictures from the party check out the previous post.  And to see a list of our menu for the party check out last week’s Recipe Wednesday post.

Charlotte, Entertaining, Family

Our Very Hungry Caterpillar Turns One!

We chose a Very Hungry Caterpillar theme for James’ first birthday party.  I started pinning things to my board months ago on Pinterest and was very happy with how the party turned out!  We had the party on Monday evening (Labor Day) since his birthday was the following Thursday.  We had lots of yummy food and enjoyed spending some time with our family.

Jason’s Dad and his Grandfather

James just wanted to be one of the guys

Can you see James trying to get to his present? He did that the whole night while we opened them which was very fun!

GrandDavid, KayKay, and James
Granddaddy, James, Moma Dean

We were sad that Grandmother was sick but James enjoyed trying to pull Grandfather’s glasses off!

Pops, Grandmommy, and James

James and Cassie

James and Gramme

Memma, James, and Papa

James devoured his cake!

Decoration pictures, etc coming up next!

Entertaining, Recipes

Recipe Wednesday – Birthday Menu

I often have a hard time coming up with complete menu’s.  So I thought I’d share our menu for James’ birthday dinner.  We had around 20 family members and ended up with just enough food.  Next time I’ll make more because I would much rather have too much than not enough!

James’ First Birthday Dinner

Two recipes of Crock Pot Barbecue
(with buns — both slider size and regular size)
(I accidentally got beef instead of pork but Jason claimed that it tasted fine.  I would make sure that you get close to 5 lb roasts if possible, because mine were closer to 4 and we didn’t have quite enough.)
Large bowl of cut fruit
One recipe of Broccoli Salad

One recipe of Corn Casserole
(So, so, so good! Should have had at least two recipes of this!)

One recipe of Slim Potato Casserole
(this was a little bland but at the same time too peppery — it could have used a lot more cheese!)

One recipe of Arkansas Green Beans
(Jason said that these were the best green beans that he’s ever had.  I would have to agree.  They were out of this world!)

Strawberry Birthday Cake

Charlotte, Entertaining, Family

Charlotte’s Birthday Party

Now that I’ve blogged about the invitations and decorations from Charlotte’s birthday party lets move to the real thing!  We had a smaller party this year and only invited the kids from our Supper Club and Charlotte’s friends from school.  Although, any party is a big party when you have so much extended family within close proximity!  The number of adults probably outnumbered the kids at least two to one.

Like I mentioned in my decorations post, they brought the blow up early so Charlotte got to watch them set it up before lunch.  She was so excited and kept saying “Wow!”

After a little bit of playtime with Daddy in the bounce house she headed inside for lunch and a nap.  We were afraid that she wasn’t going to be able to go to sleep because she was so excited but she managed to control herself eventually and fell asleep by one, which is really early by our current nap efforts!

She woke up from her nap and was so excited.  After getting dressed in her chosen outfit, her strawberry dressed, she immediately headed outside and back to the bounce house.  We had thirty minutes before her friends arrived and she took full advantage of that time to play!  I even got in with her and we bounced and went down the slide together.

Family picture.  Can you tell that we are already really hot and we had just walked outside??! We thankfully got a beautiful day with no clouds in the sky but that meant there was nothing to block the sun and the Alabama heat and humidity was intense!

James lasted about 3 minutes in his jumper before someone got him out of it.  The rest of the party he was passed around between family members.  He did pretty good but got a little overwhelmed at all of the unfamiliar faces.

While we were jumping Charlotte said that we needed to sit down so that the cheerleaders could have a turn.  At least her imaginary friends made it to her birthday party!

Charlotte’s first friend to arrive was her friend Abby from school.  Charlotte talked about Abby all year so I think they were big buds.  They had a lot of fun jumping and sliding together!  Eventually other friends came too and the bounce house filled up quickly!

I love the concentration on her face and her tongue sticking out!

When she would get almost all the way down she would always jump forward to land on her face.  Seems like a bad idea to me, but she loved it!

She had to take a break for some water because while it was hot outside it was even hotter in the bounce house!

After about 45 minutes of playtime we breaker for cupcakes.  Charlotte was very quiet during the whole thing and didn’t really smile at all but once she got her cupcake and some sugar in her and everyone’s attention was off of her she perked up some!

The party was from 3:30 – 5 and Jason took James up to nap at 4:30.  However the end of the party was  a little disturbing because James kept screaming over the monitor.  We thought that he eventually calmed down and went to sleep but after about 5 minutes found out that Dad had accidentally turned the monitor off!  So Memma went and rescued him and as soon as he saw me he started crying and reaching for me.  We got some snuggles in and he perked back up!

Charlotte had a blast at her party which was all that we wanted.  We enjoyed seeing friends and getting to catch up.  And it’s always nice to have family to celebrate with us.  It’s always hard at parties like this that you throw to talk to everyone.  Especially in this situation because we were trying to monitor kids the whole time.  But it was a great afternoon and I think next year’s party will be hard pressed to beat this one!