Brooke's Baby Shower

This past weekend I attended my friend Brooke's baby shower.  She's pregnant with TWINS!   And even better, she's not finding out the gender of the babies!  What a fun surprise!  Michelle, Carrie and Paige did such a great job as hostesses.  It was such a gorgeous shower, I just had to share the pictures with you.

The shower was held at The Women's Exchange on Clayton Road in Ladue. 

It's an adorable little shop with a seating area for lunch. 

Cookie-decorator extraordinaire Michelle made adorable baby carriage cookies that served as seating cards.  Carrie made these awesome menus.

The decorations in the place were absolutely adorable. 

And the flowers were gorgeous!

Of course, what kind of shower would it be without a little bubbly?

Paige had her friend Sonie make these onesies for the babies with pictures of mom and dad on them.  Sonie makes the cutest baby stuff - her site is HERE.  If you need a baby gift, definitely check her stuff out!

Here's mom-to-be Brooke with the hostesses.

And with me.  Seriously, doesn't she look fantastic?

I made sure to get as many pictures of the guests as possible, without harassing them and bossing them around.  Hopefully I didn't annoy anyone by constantly shoving my camera in their face!  :) 

Below is Brooke with her mom and younger sister, Sarah.  This family has some amazing genes.  Carol seriously could be mistaken as a sister of the girls.  And Sarah had a baby 2 weeks ago and looks this fabulous.  Don't you just hate them?  :) 

Lunch was fantastic.  I'd never eaten at The Women's Exchange before, but I think I'm going to have to go back.  The veggie sandwich was amazing!  And then, there was dessert.  I die.

And then it was time for gifts!!

Check out all this loot!

The gifts were fantastic.  It was so fun watching Brooke open two of everything and seeing everyone's overwhelmed expressions!  I think it finally hit us all that two babies are on their way!  TWO babies!!

She got some really amazing stuff, including this video monitoring system. 

I totally want one of these to spy on my pets while I'm gone!

And all kinds of gorgeous outfits in white. 

These are going to be some beautiful angelic babies.

Lots of books, too!

And check out this My Little Lamb seat. 

It has ears!!

Fabulous shower! 

Thanks to Carrie, Michelle and Paige for a lovely afternoon. 

And best wishes to mom-to-be Brookie! 

I can't wait to meet these babies!

Haunted Halloween Costume Party

Hello!  Sorry for my absence over the past week.  Sometimes real life gets in the way of my blogging life, you know?  And  this puppy doesn't write itself!  Things have been busy in my neck of the woods!  And I have totally been slacking on keeping you informed on them.  Please don't hate me.  I promise to make it up to you with about a million picture-heavy posts over the next few weeks.  Ok?  Can we be friends again?  Love you.

Anyway, one of the reasons I've been so busy lately is because of Halloween.  Ryan and I throw the "Baddest, Most Kick-ass, Amazingly Fun, Wild and Crazy, Spooky, Scary Spectacular Haunted Halloween Costume Party on the Face of the Earth."  I'm working on getting the title trademarked. 

If you don't believe me, just check out the food.  Yes, those are cupcakes....I made about 487 of them.  Then I ate 435 of them and put the rest on the table for the guests.

I don't want to brag or anything (ok, maybe I do), but I have the best recipe for icing in the whole-wide world.  It's light and fluffy and creamy, with just the right amount of sweetness.  Perfection.  My friend Claire's sister is a pastry chef and I stalked/called/emailed/harassed her for months and begged/bribed/pleaded/threw temper tantrums, etc. for the recipe got the recipe from her. 

We also had Devilish Devilled Eggs.  With red pepper horns, of course.

And Halloween Candy Bark.  OMG, I can't get over how good this recipe was.  I'm not even a huge fan of some of the ingredients (I'm just not a salty-sweet kinda girl) but this was about the best dessert I've ever made.  I can't take credit for it though - I got the recipe HERE.  It's unreal how good it is.

And the bark wasn't even the best thing.  I didn't get a picture of it, but in that hot tray was a giant batch of Jalapeno Popper Dip, served with toasted bagette slices.  I died after eating it.  I came back to life periodically throughout the night, but only to eat more dip.  I've never had so many people ask me for the recipe on anything I've ever made.  This dip was such a hit.  And now I will share it with you - click HERE.  Do yourself a favor and make this dip ASAP.  But please have a few dozen friends over to share it, otherwise you'll eat the whole thing yourself.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Here are a couple pictures of the decorations in the house.  It took me about 10 hours to get everything up and ready.  It'll take me 4 months to take everything down.

This spider terrifies me every single time I walk into my kitchen.  I almost had a heart-attack Saturday night when I went downstairs to get some water in the middle of the night.  I really need to put it away.

In the front yard, we set up a graveyard.  We had tombstones illuminated with a red light and tiki torches leading up to the front door.  Spooky Halloween sounds are playing on the stereo.  And this year we added a fog machine.  It was pretty damn cool.   We did the same thing the next night for the trick-or-treaters and had a few childen say we definitely had the scariest house on the block.  A couple kids were even crying on the sidewalk because they were too afraid to come to our door.  Bwwaaaahaahahahahahaha!  It was awesome. 

We also converted our garden in the backyard into a cemetary.

And now for the costumes!  Are you ready?  Hold onto your horses...

I was so impressed with Ryan's costume.  If you can't tell what he is, you obviously haven't seen Tropic Thunder.  Hello Les Grossman.  When he told me he wanted to do this costume I was skeptical, but knew if he could pull it off it'd be fantastic.  And he totally pulled it off!  I love it!

A few of our neighbors stopped by to check everything out.

My friend Iris drove 5+ hours to come to the party.  She's the best!

We had Batman and Octomom.

Ryan's aunt and uncle came as hippies. 

Peace out.

A young William Wallace and his wench, Murron.

Ryan's parents were from the Snuggie commercial.

Payne Stewart and Snookie.  GTL Baby.

Wilma and Fred Flintstone.

And I was Sookie Stackhouse from True Blood. 

Thank you Kelly at Mrs. In Training for the costume!  It was a big hit!

Below, Johnston was a ........., ummmmm......, well......., a Master Baiter. 

Pretty clever.

He won the costume contest for Best Individual Costume.

The fabulous Jenna was Elvira.  If you haven't read Jenna's BLOG yet, it's a must-read.  She's battling breast cancer AND growing a baby in that belly!  She's about 5 months pregnant and she's absolutely amazing!

Henry was a drunk sorority girl.  Hilarious. 

I wish I had a picture of the back of this costume because it was fabulous (i.e. lower back tattoo and exposed thong).

Here we have Elin Woods and a swashbuckler.

Claire was a butterfly and Alice (who really is pregnant) was 16 and Pregnant (complete with backpack and plaid skirt).  So funny!

Below, Anna (on the right) and her husband were a pair of Chilean Miners. 

They won best costume for a couple.  Outstanding!  I barely recognized her (Alice didn't)!

And of course, what party would be complete without the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Il and Spiderman?  Not ours!

My sorority sister (and college roommate) Traci and her husband rode thier Harley to the party.  Somehow I don't think this costume was much of a stretch for them, but I loved it!

Remember Teagan?  These are her adorable parents.  Love them.

Another fantastic couple's costume was this one. 

Kirsten was a taco and Kasey was Tequilla. 

They even walked around forcing shots of tequilla on anyone that would take one.

Like Iris.

And Ryan.

And me, of course. 

Luckily we didn't get a picture of that.

My friend Stephanie had to come to the party directly after meeing with clients, so she grabbed a blonde wig and a stuffed dog and was Elle Woods, Legally Blonde.  I think she could pull off the blonde!

My brother's friends were Captain Kirk and an alien.

I loved this costume. 

My favorite part is that he had green paint smeared all over his face. 

Fabulous.

Joe and Jenny were NASCAR drivers. 

Other than the Snuggies, they were the only ones that stayed warm all night.

Smart.

I seriously adore my friends. 

I'm so blessed to have a great group of friends from my sorority...

From law school...

From the restaurant I worked at in college...

And the girls I've meet through Ryan...

I am one serioulsy lucky fangbanger.

Judging by the fact that we didn't go to bed until well after 4 a.m., I think the party was a success.

I already can't wait until next year!

Word.