16 oz packages cream cheese softened 
  8 oz stick butter softened
  1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
  3 tablespoons brown sugar
  3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
  1 1/2 cups finely chopped pecans
  1 cup miniature semisweet chips

Beat softened cream cheese and butter until well blended.  Add brown sugar and confectioners’ sugar and blend until light and fluffy. Blend in vanilla extract. Fold in miniature chocolate chips and 1 cup of the chopped pecans.

Place plastic wrap into a small bowl as a liner and add the cream cheese mixture. Refrigerate in bowl for at least 3 hours. Flip out the cheese ball onto a plate and press the other 1/2 cup of chopped pecans into the sides of the cheese ball. Serve with animal crackers.

Alternate preparations include pouring caramel sauce over the top or replacing 1/2 the chocolate chips with butterscotch chips . Also goes well with sliced apples, graham crackers or vanilla wafers.

Saturday, November 14th we celebrated the upcoming birth of Katy & Michael Woodruff’s baby boy.  I offered to host the festivities along with my mother-in-law, Janie Pate.  We were able to rent the lovely and convenient club house in Katy’s neighborhood in Calera.

I learned a lot from this shower because though I have had a few showers and been to a few of my friends, I have never hosted a baby shower.  I made the invitations and was able to get those out a month in advance. I purchased scrapbooking supplies and was able to make 52 invitations for about $1 a piece.  Not too bad.  

Katy and I went shopping for linens and chose the colors mint green and chocolate brown.  They looked really great together. While we were at Party City, Katy picked out some cute party favors that I thought would work well for the event.  Making the labels was the easier part; the hard part was finding the candy to fill them.  I wanted to find colored M&M’s but I couldn’t find them anywhere locally and online they were really expensive.  I ran by Target as a last ditch effort and found their Jelly Belly section.  They had the Mint Mint Chocolate Chocolate Chip^®Cold Stone Jelly Belly and Chocolate Devotion^™ Cold Stone Jelly Belly in the perfect colors for our event. A little ribbon to accent and we have a cute party favor for the guests to take home.

The meal plan was to have finger food appetizers since we didn’t have very much seating for the event.  We had invited over 100 guests so we were unsure if people would be standing to eat.  It turned out that Michael’s family had a bunch of folding chairs the could lend us. Our final guest count was around 40 so we ended up having plenty of seating.  I went a little overboard on the menu (typical Brandy) but it was for one of my very favorite couples and a life long family friend. Luckily, I had the help of two wonderful friends, Carol Long and Beth Tillman to help me put everything together. (Two of the photos below were taken before I put out the the meat and cheese trays but you get the idea.)

Our menu included (from left to right):

• Mixed Nuts
• Crab Stuffed Mushrooms
• Spicy & Sweet Meatballs
• Turtle Cheesecake Cheese Ball with Animal Crackers
• Sliced Cheese Tray: Sharp Cheddar, Monterey Jack & Pepper Jack
• Sliced Lunch Meat Tray: Hard Salami, Roast Beef & Honey Ham
• Poppy Seed Rolls for sandwiches
• Cold Spinach Dip in a Italian Loaf & Sourdough Loaf served with a variety of crackers
• Sundried Tomato & Olive Bruschetta with Italian Toast Points
• Mini Quiche: Double-Cheese and Spinach
• Vegetable Tray
• Veggie Patch Pizza
• Fresh Fruit Tray with Strawberry Cream
• Mini Cupcakes: Chocolate Caramel, Strawberry Vanilla & Lemon Poppy Seed
• Publix Marble Cake with Butter Cream Frosting
• Treats for the kids: Fruit Snacks, Granola Bars and Scooby Snacks.
• Assorted Beverages: Sodas, Water, Sweet Tea, Wine, Beer & Lemonade

LOOK FOR THESE RECIPES SOON!

I made a diaper cake a few days before the event as a centerpiece for the food table and as a gift to Michael & Katy.  It was pretty easy to make once I found a good set of instructions online. Visit www.plantheperfectbabyshower.com to see how I did it. The hardest part was finding the darn ribbon. I couldn’t find a chocolate and mint green thick roll of ribbon to save my life. After four or five stores, I went with two different ribbons to make it work.

A baby shower isn’t just about the food, gifts and cake. People like to have a good time and if you have kids attending, like we did, games and prizes are a great crowd pleaser.  I wanted to have a few homemade games for the event but, unfortunately, I was running low on time and so I had to use online games.

The first game was one Katy and Hillary Wilson did at our baby shower. You get five paper bags and we put a different baby related item in each one such as baby lotion, baby powder, Vaseline, diaper cream, baby oil etc. You number the bags and seal them with stables or tape. At the party you have the guests feel the bags and write down their guess for each bag.

The day of the event, I asked my husband to print out some games from www.WelcomeBaby.com. He chose three great games: Baby Word Scramble Game, Nursery Rhyme Rhetoric Game and Baby Animal Match Game. It ended up that mostly the children played and the adults either played as couples or in a group. The only issue I had was that I had four games and I only made three prizes. Be sure when you have your party that you bring lots of paper and pens to play the games.

The prizes were pretty simple too.  I purchases three sets of paper products from Party City,  matching notepad, gift cards, shopping list and mini journal with pen. I then found matching candles from Walmart.  Finally, when I was looking for the colored M&M’s I stopped by a Crave Chocolatier in Patton Creek. They had chocolate diaper pins and chocolate covered Oreos decorated with baby booties. I made card board bottoms and added all the matching items and wrapped them with cellophane and topped them off with matching ribbon.

So that was about everything.  I did have a CD player with soft baby music but I didn’t remember to put that on.  While the presents were being opened, Beth suggested we keep all of the bows to make a wreath for the hospital door when Baby Woodruff is born. Hillary Mathaney helped organize the present opening and made sure all the bows were collected.

As I mentioned, my wonderful friend Beth was able to come help with the event and she did a fantastic job which just means I will ask her to help every time I do an event. I also brought my husbands Nikon camera and Beth sat in front of Katy & Michael to take all of the pictures of the event. Then I posted them up on different sites, so she could share them with Katy’s family & friends. If you are a member of Shutterfly and would like to view the photos please CLICK HERE.

Well I hope this article helps you with your upcoming event. If you have any suggestions or comments about our shower or have trouble viewing the photos, feel free to comment or email me at brandy@cookingwithbrandy.com. Don’t forget to come back to get the recipes to the menu above.