Friday, March 30, 2012

Sarah's Baby Shower - Milk & Cookie Bar

I'm a big fan of the milk and cookie bar concept. How could it possibly be bad? I mean...

Milk. Yay!

Lots of cookies. Double YAY!

Milk & cookies together in a bar? WOO HOO! SPRING BREAK!


Fortunately, no one spiked the milk. That we know of... Hmm... Those kids were going kind of crazy with the pom poms there at the end... So, who knows...


As with the main table, a lot of the items on the milk & cookie table were actually things we already had on hand. The green runner was one of four runners I made by cutting up a tablecloth. The frames around the chalkboards are hand-me-down items from Stephen's Grandmother. I sometimes use them as photography props on shoots.


The chalkboard in the smaller frame was a blank canvas that Theresa already had. She painted it with chalkboard paint she had leftover from a previous project.


For the larger frame, Theresa bought and painted a piece of foam core board. Both were duct taped onto the backs of the frames. Very simple.

One of the milk jugs is a former apple cider jug from my Mom's house. I believe Theresa found the other bottles on clearance somewhere. And Theresa bought the ice bucket with the intention of using it her home somewhere.


The glass cookie jar collection was assembled from my china cabinet, Theresa's kitchen, and  my Mom's dish collection. Some of the cookie jars were even leftover from the candy bar at my wedding...


We included "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" on the table because it's a fabulous book and because it amused us to do so.


Same goes with the Cookie Monster. I came across an image of Cookie Monster trapped in a jar while staring longingly at a plate of cookies on Pinterest, cracked up, and immediately sent it to Theresa with, "WE HAVE TO DO THIS!" as the subject line. Fortunately, Theresa gets my sense of humor and agreed.


For shower prizes, Theresa assembled pre-measured cookie mixes in mason jars and included a recipe for "Baby Katherine's Country Oatmeal Cookies". You can see one of the prize jars behind Cookie Monster. They were scattered all throughout the milk & cookie table.

We had oatmeal, chocolate chip, nutella, checkerboard/pinwheel, lemon ABCs, gingerbread, peanut butter blossoms, and funfetti cookies in the jars. All of the cookies were homemade with the exception of the gingerbread. Theresa and I each made 4 types of cookie dough in the month prior to the shower and then froze them. Theresa even used Kim's method for freezing cookies ahead of time and I loved how easy it made everything. Definitely life-changing Kim! Thanks!


Two days before the shower, I had a big cookie bake-a-thon at my house. It smelled like someone set a cookie bomb off in the downstairs and it was heavenly. Joseph spent a lot of time moving his stool around trying to steal freshly baked cookies. Smart kid. He even got a hold of a few while I had my back turned and then looked at me like, "What?" when I put my hands on my hips and glared at him.

I guess it's only fair since he helped make half of the cookies.


He gets SO excited every time I pull out the mixer for anything. Really. He shakes and laughs in his dorky little way EVERY time. He helps me add all the ingredients, steals whatever tastes he can get, and then is COMPLETELY offended every time I do this:


MOM?! What do you mean I can't eat all of the dough??? WHY?? Why would you wrap it up like that?!?! Meanest. Mother. Ever.


But... But... It's GONE!!


Very upsetting. I don't let him eat the raw cookie dough when it has eggs in it... but when the dough is eggless...


...I have no qualms handing over the spatula.


At one point, he started licking his hands. It was kind of hilarious to watch.


Planning baby showers is the best, Mom!


That was one happy kid! Hip hip hooray for eggless nutella cookies!


And don't even get him started on sprinkles!


I sliced the pinwheel cookies while Joseph meticulously picked up all the stray sprinkles and popped them into his mouth.


Then he'd get really mad at me when I stuck the trays in the ovens. He thinks I'm so unreasonable, but he always likes the result.


Joseph's favorite cookie to make was probably the lemon ABC cookies. The kid is obsessed with letters and numbers. He can count to 10 (in order, without prompting!?!? when did that happen?!?!) and can identify all of the uppercase letters of the alphabet.


So cutting out letter cookies with Aunt Theresa? I think it rates right up there with choo choo trains.


Me: "Joseph, what letter are you holding?"

Joseph: "Effffff!"


For the cake, we wanted to keep it simple, something we could slap together right before the shower. Keeping with the theme, we settled on a giant "oreo".Theresa made two rounds of brownies in a quiche pan and we made an oreo/cream cheese/cool whip filling.


The cake was assembled a little haphazardly as a certain pregnant lady (*cough* Sarah *cough*) walked through the door 10 minutes early while I was putting it together. Then a certain little boy (*cough* Joseph *cough*) promptly fell and tried to knock out his front two teeth. But, whatever, it was tasty and Joseph still has his teeth, so all is well. :)

At the end of the party, we had everyone take the remaining cookies home in baggies as favors.

I think it went well. Hard to go wrong with a glass of milk and a homemade cookie.


Finally, all the credit for putting together the milk and cookie bar at the shower goes to the lovely Theresa. I'd let her blog and tell you all about it... but then you'd have to wait until December. ;)

But seriously... Bestest. Shower. Planning. Partner. EVAH!

Thank you, Pretty Lady, for keeping me grounded, for doing the vast majority of the shopping, and for all the good times. You rock my socks! :) Oh, and...

LOVE!

3 comments:

  1. I love this idea for a baby shower! And not only because I've been eating milk and cookies like it's going out of style. I texted Ryan with an SOS yesterday to pick up Oreos and more milk on the way home. I'm a nutcase.

    I love all the cookies, but I'm particularly drooling over the alphabet cookies. And the cookie monster in a jar is hilarity. And the fact that your little guy has cookie dough LITERALLY up to his eyeballs? Priceless.

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  2. mmmmmm Milk and Cookies... can we just do that every weekend because it. was. fabulous. :)
    Dude. Joseph and his managing to get cookie dough ON HIS FOREHEAD?? How did that even happen? I love it. :)
    Yet another detail I almost cried over, "Baby Katherine's Country Oatmeal Cookies". I love that baby Katherine already has a cookie recipe. And here I thought she was just having dance parties, apparently she was productively coming up with cookie recipes!

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  3. And speaking of recipes... I think you need to post the chocolate nutella and the sprinkle roll cookie recipes. They look SO good and I'm pretty sure I need to try them :-) This is all so cute!

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