We left town for the holiday weekend and took no computers or cell phones. It was wonderful! But I am back to real life now and back to blogging! Hopefully I can get some things accomplished today and get some blog posts written for this week!
What did you do for Memorial Day??
This is a delicious salsa that can be eaten with tortilla or pita chips. It is also great on tacos or alongside any other Mexican food as a salad. The recipe is a conglomeration of several recipes I have tried. Enjoy!
Recipe: Black Bean Salsa
From the Kitchen of: Emily Nelson
Yield: about 6 cups
Ingredients:
Directions: Mix all ingredients together. Serve with chips or whatever you want. It is delicious. NOTE: Do not add black pepper even though it might seem like a good idea. It ruins this salsa, in my opinion!
These are very simple to make and VERY yummy.
Grind up your Oreos with your food processor. If you don’t have one you can place them in a Ziplock bag and crush them with a rolling pin.
Put your crumbs in a bowl and add a block of softened cream cheese. Use a mixer to combine. (NOTE: I tried combining the crumbs and cream cheese with the food processor. It worked but then it made everything too warm and I had to chill it before I could roll it into balls.)
Shape dough into 1” balls and place on a parchment lined baking sheet. (I used my cookie scoop to scoop out some dough and then used my fingers to divide that in half to get the perfect sized balls.)
Chill your dough balls in the freezer while you melt your chocolate.
I used Ghiradelli candy making chocolate I had picked up at Sam’s club at Christmas time. You can use chocolate chips, but may end up with some white spots on the chocolate after it hardens. No biggie if you are just making them for your family but if you want them to be really pretty I would suggest using candy chocolate.
Give your chocolate a rough chop.
Melt your chocolate. I have this VERY handy chocolate dipping pot. If you don’t have one melt according to package directions in the microwave. I do not recommend using a double boiler or a bowl over boiling water. I have had too much chocolate ruined by one drop of water getting into the bowl.
Remove balls from the freezer and insert lollipop sticks. Working quickly, dip truffles in the chocolate coating, tap them on the side of the bowl to remove excess, and place back onto parchment. If using sprinkles, add them before the chocolate hardens. If they slip off too much dip a couple more before adding sprinkles to the first on so the chocolate sets a bit more and then your sprinkles will stay put.
Allow to harden. If using chocolate chips you will need to place them in the refrigerator to get them stiff again. I placed mine in the baking cups after they were hardened just for decorative purposes.
Recipe: Oreo Truffles
Yield: about 40
Ingredients:
Directions: Crush Oreos into fine crumbs and mix with cream cheese. Roll into 1” balls and place on parchment lined baking sheet. Chill while you melt the chocolate for dipping. Dip the balls into melted chocolate, shake to remove excess, and place back on parchment lined baking sheet. Add sprinkles, if desired.
This is the salad I served at the Little Man baby shower. My sister made it for me and she left out the broccoli and cauliflower. You can really use any ingredients you like and leave out any you don’t care for.
Recipe: Italian Pasta Salad
From the Kitchen of: Emily Nelson
Yield: One large salad
Ingredients:
Directions: Combine all ingredients with ½ bottle dressing. Use the other half to put on just before serving. Don’t worry if your pasta is stuck together. It will come apart once you put the dressing on. This salad is best when chilled, so make it ahead of time.
Decorative items for this shower can be purchased HERE.
Well, the shower went off without a hitch. I will admit it was a TON of work for me….much more than I anticipated. I was exhausted by the time the party started! But I think all the guests had a nice time and enjoyed themselves and hopefully my sister was happy and felt loved.
So, I am just going to post a ton of pictures from the shower. I had some trouble taking some of the pictures due to the time of day and lighting in the room. Hopefully you will still be able to see all the little details. In the coming days I will post recipes for the food. Enjoy!
How to make this printable HERE
I wanted to do something a little different with the cupcake toppers than I have seen before. So instead of just scalloped circles I did scalloped squares and pinked circles, each in 3 different colors. I love how they turned out! HERE is my tutorial on making cupcake topper graphics.
Cupcakes made by my sister Melinda. We use an icing coupler to pipe the frosting because we could never find a big enough tip. The coupler is the little white thing that makes it so you can switch out the tips on your pastry bag. You have to find one without a little notch in it though.
Garland inspired by THIS party.
The onesies were made with heat transfer vinyl I cut on my Silhouette.
These hanging garlands spun around slowly all night. Here you are seeing the back side of several of the circles. I connected the shapes using clear fishing line and clear tape.
This was a fall colored wreath that I had spray painted white. I added the ribbon and fabric rosettes to match my color scheme. The twinkle lights gave a nice effect during the shower.
Vinyl mustaches on plastic cups.
Stamped paper plates…how to HERE.
Black Bean and Corn Salsa (Made by my sister Molly)
Homemade Chips (made by my sister Molly)
Italian BOWTIE Pasta Salad (Made by my sister Laura)
Cucumber Water (SUPER refreshing!)
Oreo Truffles
Pretzel “Cigars”
Bowtie Sugar Cookies (made with a homemade cookie cutter)
Triple Dipped Strawberries (made by my sister Maggi)
Baby Caleb all dressed up + the favors.
Chocolate mustache molds can be found at Bake It Pretty
Four of my cuties in disguise!
To purchase some of the decorative items from this shower, please look here
