Hot Air Balloon - Baby shower

One of my very good friends enlisted my help and the power of Pinterest to through an amazing shower for a bouncing baby boy.

We started out by agreeing that bottles, blocks and trucks have been done to death.  After scouring pinterest for shower ideas we had both pinned this little guy:

 

After scanning the directions we dove head first into this little project with a mandatory trip to Michaels.  Of course I had to open my big mouth with "you know what would look really cute?  A big one and a little one side by side"

 

Should have read the directions more closely.  Alas hindsight is 50/50.

 

It took me a couple tries, a few curse words under my breath, the engineering of my husband and a trusty measuring tape but did these come out cute or what??

 

With 6 of us on the decorating committee we were able to knock them out in about a week.

All packed away nice and cozy

Making a debut the day of the shower

To add a little more whimsy we hung hot air balloons and clouds from the trees

 

We ordered our banner here on Etsy, the shop owner was amazing and totally worked with me on the design and how we wanted to feel of the shower.  We also got matching balloon cupcake toppers pictured below.

 

My friend Joi Lawler over at Cake Mix created our lovely lemon cake based on this design; as well as the balloon and cloud sugar cookies.

 

Even if your having a boy, there's nothing like adding a little sparkle.

Down to the very last dreamy cloud detail, I'm pretty sure this shower was a hit!

 

Smooth E Operator

I know its been few and far between that I've been able to post anything.  The short story of it all is that we're short staffed at my work and I've been working 13 hour days (that's right people, I'm gone from 5am to 7pm)  The sad side effect is that I've been eating out for all my meals because I leave so early and come home so late I'm to exhausted to prepare anything.....and now I've gained back all the weight I'd lost plus some more.  BOO.

Upside, Hubby bought me a Ipad so in my down time at work I've been on Pinterest, pin pin pining away paleo recipes.  By some miracle I had 6 days off in a row and decided to actually try some of these recipes and really try to get back on track with paleo eating.

These are my trusty tools:  IPAD and Blender.  I also picked up this snazzy mortar and pestle at Costco, a few of these recipes called for ground flax seed.  I also heard that ground chia seed helps thicken smoothies and is amazing in Omega 3.

This did take quite a while to cut up all the fruit and read each recipe so I don't have pictures of them all.  Instead I'm posting the pretty pictures from the blogs they came from, followed by my modified recipe, when you click on the picture it will link you to the original recipe.

Why modified you ask?  I'm allergic to banana (the base of most smoothies), I had to use the fruit on hand and some had to be paleo-fied.

Strawberry Sunbutter & Spinach

http://www.coffeeandquinoa.com/2013/03/strawberry-spinach-sunbutter-smoothie/

• 2 cups frozen strawberries
• 2 large handful spinach leaves
• 3 Tbsp sunbutter
• 1cup unsweetened almond milk
• 1.5 Tbsp maple syrup
• 1Tbsp ground flax seed
• 2 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon

I doubled the original recipe and it filled 2 mason jars perfectly.   This smoothie is pretty delicious, especially if your a peanut butter lover like my hubby is.  Sun butter is the perfect sub, Trader Joe's has a pretty yummy jar for under $5.

Mango Orange

http://oursavorylife.com/a-super-hydrating-paleo-smoothie-recipe/

1 cup frozen mango's

1 orange, peeled

2 apricots

1 cup almond milk

1/2 cup 100% pure coconut milk

Chia Seed and Ground Flax optional

Bright citrus flavor, the apricot didn't blend down to well though.  If you don't like chunky smoothies I would leave it out.

Pina Colada

http://www.vegalicious.org/2011/02/04/pina-colada-smoothie/

• 2 cups pineapple (I used frozen from Trader Joe's)
• 1 cup mango
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 cup pineapple juice
• Chia Seed and Ground Flax optional

This was my favorite, the only down side was it was a little to acidic drinking it all at once, but that could just be me. I still have one more jar of this so I'm going to definitely try again.

At this point I was feeling pretty confident in my smoothie making ability's and decided to wing it.  I had purchased some pre cooked beets at Costco, super healthy....super disgusting.  Picture me, dumping 3 juicy beets in the blender, dancing in the kitchen singing "turn the beet around, blah blah blah, the passion".  It didn't matter how much fruit I put in the blender it was not going to cover that taste.  I even dumped half out and tried to salvage it.  No Bueno.

So we scrapped that batch and moved on.

Very Berrylicious

http://www.thegraciouspantry.com/clean-eating-super-berry-smoothie/

1 cup blueberries

1 cup strawberries

1 cup blackberries

2 big hand fulls of spinach

1 tablespoon chia seeds (I added ground flax too)

1 cup unsweetened almond milk 

Another fav of the Hubby's, he loves anything berry and definitely better than beets!

Here are my little beauties in the freezer, each batch filled 2 jars. My mom bought me blue ball jars at Target.  I also bought larger jars to make salads in more on that to come and more smoothie recipes too.  I found some with avocado base, that should be interesting.