Maria and Monica's baby shower

 

My sister Maria and my sister-in-law Monica are both having baby girls next month! We are so excited. It is the third child for each, but we still wanted to have a little baby shower with immediate family. So my mom and I held one at her house a few weeks ago.

I ordered the invites and she hand made all the cute decorations. She is super talented--if you're wondering where my craftiness came from.

There was me, my mom Carolyn, our sister-in-law Lori, Maria, Monica, her mom Roxy and grandma Lucy, friend Brenda, Maria's mother and sister-in-law Dawna and Josie, her Grandma (in-law) Audrey, and our aunt Sherri. We just wish our sister Meg was there!

It was pretty low-key, we mostly just ate and talked.

I made chicken salad sandwiches (just used canned chicken and added celery, apple, red onion, mayo, mustard, craisins, etc. Next time I'll add feta cheese.) and the cupcakes were this vanilla cupcake recipe and this lemon cheesecake mousse on top. 

The cupcakes though!

I rather stupidly decided to try a new recipe from scratch the day before the shower, and this is what happened! So I went back to the store to buy more ingredients, tried lowering the oven temp and some other things and the second batch turned out like this, too! It was almost comical.

See the mini round cake in the middle, between the two cupcake pans? That I saved for Isabelle's "smash cake" on her first birthday. It is so pathetic looking, hahahahahahaha

The problem with the recipe is that it has three different leavening agents, (creaming the butter, plus baking soda and baking powder) and we live over a mile high in elevation and so even though I only filled the cups halfway, the batter rose a huge amount and then collapsed. The flavor was really good, just know that they might not turn out pretty.

 Anyway....

 

 My mom had us fill out papers with our hopes for the babies as they grow up, and then the girls opened gifts. There was quite a decent haul!

 

I gave them baskets with all my favorite baby things and some sister bracelets.

 After gifts, we sewed some burp cloths from cute flannel and cloth diapers (cut in half) for the back. They will be awesome, I wish I'd made some for me a year ago.

 

When it was over, the husbands came back over with our kids. It was fun to see so much family. Now I just can't wait to meet those BABIES!!