jaina | Dan and Debby's Excellently Geeky Baby Shower Adventure

(that's right! I'm busting out the old-school Charlie and Claire icon for this post!)

Soooo, as previously mentioned, Tree and I co-hosted Dan and Debby's baby shower on Sunday at her house. We promised them that it would just be a regular party, except with presents and cake-- no games involving diaper pins or toilet paper or anything scary like that. This ensured that 1) our circle of friends would come, even the single gamer boys, and relatedly, that 2) Debby and Dan would actually attend their own shower. :D

I had promised cake, so I had to live up to my end of the bargain. I ended up going maybe a liiiiittle bit crazy, because I apparently felt the need to make a cake, cupcakes, and cake pops. I'm sure you are all shocked, shocked! to hear that I was still up at 2 am on Sunday, sticking chocolate ladybugs onto cake pops. No? Yeah, me neither.

ANYWAY! I'm not gonna be working at Charm City Cakes anytime soon, but I am pretty damn excited about how these came out:

D&D (ha) announced the news to the gaming group by passing around a character sheet that looked something like this. It took awhile for the guys to figure it out, but they eventually caught on. So this is my tribute to that. :) (On the name thing-- D&D neglected to provide us with a baby nickname, so the guys came up with one. Reasoning: baby girl = pink, pink = lightish red, lightish red = Donut.)

Also, cupcakes!

And... (please pardon terrible picture, did I mention it was 2 am?)

I needed a drying rack for my cake pops, but of course I had thrown out all the random Styrofoam that we had around the house. So I used the only Styrofoam I could find:

Improvising a drying rack for my cake pops

I put ladybugs on the cake pops because the nursery set that D&D bought has ladybugs on it-- it's super cute. Of course someone at the party thought they looked like eyeballs, and that's what everyone ended up calling them. Grrrr. >:( I wasn't super scientific about my cake-to-frosting ratio when I mixed these up, so they ended up kind of squishy and lumpy-looking, and their tops got all flat when I put them in the freezer to firm up. But that actually made it easier to stick the ladybugs on, and hey, they tasted good!

I made the ladybugs by dropping red candy melts onto wax paper and then freezing them briefly, then drawing on the details with a chocolate candy writer:

We had a metric ton of desserts-- besides the stuff I made, Rachel made chocolate cupcakes and two kinds of cookies (Dan's favorite and Debby's favorite), and Amy brought one of the chocolate fountains from Debby's wedding shower, which was a nice bit of symmetry.

For actual food, we had potato products galore-- Debby's been obsessed with potatoes since at least November, so it seemed like a good idea. :) Rogue made Pizzeria Uno-style skinless bakes, and Tree and Alex made mashed potatoes and tater tots. Apparently the tater tots were pretty good dipped in chocolate from the fountain? Also I made deviled eggs. Like you do.

We had meant to play normal games (Munchkin, Apples to Apples, Catchphrase), but we were all too busy talking and laughing! So that was fun. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, both grandmothers Skyped in and were able to watch the gift-opening via webcam. Gifts ranged from practical (bathtub-of-baby-stuff) to geeky (two sizes of the Level 1 Human onesie) to man-it's-good-to-be-friends-with-a-pediatrician (Rachel and her box of "here is all the stuff you don't know you need but you'll thank me later"). They also got our very last Ewok bib that we bought at C4.

After gifts, we had cake (and there was a near-disaster when Dan tilted the cake board to show his mom on the webcam and the cake almost went crashing onto the laptop) and Alex gave out party favors to the boys-- little bags of dice. Of course.

Would you believe me if I said that we are wise, foresighted party planners and deliberately scheduled the shower for the same day as the Oscars, so the party could go on longer? ...yeah, again, me neither. But it worked out well! Most people didn't stay the whole time, but James and Whitney arrived after their flight, so that was great that they could join us.

Overall, it was really fun, I had a great time, and I hope everyone else did, too. Tree and Alex, thank you so much, again, for hosting and generally being fabulous.

I leave you with a quote from the party:
Me: "What do you say to people at a baby shower, anyway? 'Congratulations'? 'Happy baby'?"
Rogue: "'Nice knowing you.'"