Baby Shower for David & Paige

My brother and his wife are due in mid-June with their first, a boy.  We are all very excited.  It's about time we had another baby in our family!  My mom, sister and I threw them a shower at my parents house.  D&P have decorated the nursery with a jungle theme.  Paige's sister is an artist and had previously painted the walls bright blue with bamboo shoots.  This goes well with all the brown monkeys D&P have found to decorate the room with.  Naturally, we had a jungle themed baby shower with monkeys being the center-focus animal.

My mom took care of the decorations, which she always does a fantastic job with...I love all her details including the "Guess the number of banana runts" game that was also a decoration, the grass type table runner to give it that jungle feel, and the silk arrangements of mini banana leaves.

My sister took care of all the fabulous appetizers.  She has a knack for finding creative ones, using old family standbys and her own inventions.  The guests were so full from all her yummy treats that when we brought out the ham and turkey sandwich bar, everyone moaned, "more food?!?!"  No one ever goes hungry at the Corsetti house.  In fact, it's recommended that you wear your Thanksgiving Pants.

My job the dessert.  Yes. no "s".  However, I read too many cake and cookie decorating blogs to stop at just one.  I had so many little monkey ideas or other treats that I wanted to try.  I attempted four, yes four, desserts.  Only three worked out.

Cake pops from Bakerella 

A fondant chocolate cake - from my own brain.  And a candy melt monkey 

And monkey cookies from the Jungle Themed cookie cutters I found in the Wilton aisle at Michaels

The house was beautiful, the food was delicious, and the desserts were just what everyone needed/wanted at the end of Lent.  It was a good thing I had take home options for the die-hards (no pun intended) waiting for Easter morning.

David and Paige went home with a ton of great loot for baby ZHC.  In lieu of cards, we asked everyone bring their favorite board book and sign the inside of it.  Really, a book is only a dollar or two more than a card, and it will last a life time.  They loved it!  The favorite book was called "This is not my Pirate".  If you know D&P they have a history of dressing up as pirates...so this book was extra fitting.  If you look closely, my aunt taped a picture of D&P dressed as pirates to the back of the book and wrote "These are my pirates".  Adorable.

Of course, what is a baby shower without games?  We played a few quick, non-embarassing games that were good for a co-ed crowd.  Everyone had a chance to guess how many banana runts were in the martini glass.  Everyone could put a $1 in the piggy bank to guess the due date.  Then we did a baby animals name game.  There was a list of animals that you had to list what the young off spring is called..things like Eagle = Eaglet, Frog = tadpole, etc

The young guys (and then my FIL decided to play) had to chug beer from a baby bottle.

And the Papa to be won..... Butt Paste.

Now that's a face of excitement.....


The ladies played a game called "What's in Mama's Purse". Every woman was given a list of random items that could be found in a purse.  Each item was assigned a point value.  Things like pens, chapstick, tissues were 1 point.  Things like left over Mexican were 100 point.  And then things like a jump drive were in the 20 point range.  We had a blast digging through our purses and laughing about all the random stuff we carry around.  The winner had over 350 point.  Yikes!

We had a great afternoon!


Special thanks to Natalie at The Busy Budgeting Mama for designing the treat bags and the cake pop tags :)  They were a great hit!  And we used the bag fold overs as little tent decorations around the house.  Everyone loved it!

My next Baking with Betty post will give all the dessert recipes - be on the look out!

Love,