SHOWER!

And not the kind where you shampoo in the morning.

This weekend is my sister's wedding shower in Evansville, at my parents' house. I sent my mom to the grocery to get some foodstuffs, and she's handling grabbing some flowers. But I am bringing the 6 lbs of broccoli salad and 50-ish cupcakes (I made 48... a couple or three may not have even made it out of the condo... my bad.)

So I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Here's what I've done:

• Scoured ye ol internets for my sister's specific color of wedding green in tissue paper. On the website I found, it's called "Green Tea" but it's like a moss color. I then ordered a package of said paper, not realizing that "package" meant "one hojillion pages." Meh, whatever. I did all this to make tissue paper pom-poms to hang around the party, all whimsical-like. Mom said "I'm not repainting my ceilings, April!!!" So I made sure to get the 3M safe-to-remove sticky hooks. I'm on it, Mom!
• Hit up Target for said sticky hooks and chocolates, and then went to Joann fabrics for string for the pom-poms and tiny little bags to put chocolates in for favors.
• Stuffed all aforementioned tiny bags with chocolates. May have filched a few for myself?
• Hit up the grocery for supplies to make the cupcakes & broccoli salad. Katie also wanted to have mimosas at the party, so I bought a ton of champagne, OJ, pineapple juice, and pomegranete juice (different juices for a twist on the traditional mimosa!)
• Baked 2 dozen yellow cake cupcakes and 2 dozen chocolate cupcakes. The yellow cake guys were from a box (Duncan Hines just does it so much better than I can), but the chocolate cupcakes were from this Pioneer Woman recipe. The recipe makes a sheetcake, so I was a bit anxious about how they were going to turn out, but HOO BOY they are good. Not to toot my own horn, but TOOT TOOT. Ok, maybe I'm tooting Pioneer Woman's horn. That chick knows what she is talking about. I think these are going to be a standard in my arsenal now.
• After the cupcakes were baked, I made Martha's Basic Buttercream to frost the cupcakes with (and so the fondant would stick to the top).
• My friend Stacy came over to help with the cupcake extravaganza, so I put her to work rolling out premade fondant I'd purchased at Michael's. I have to say, I was glad it was her doing the rolling and not me. She did a great job! She cut out round disks and I put them on top of the buttercream, rounding the edges and wiping off any excess frosting. Once we get to Evansville, I'm going to pipe a green DCK monogram on each of them for my sis and her dude's first names and his last name (soon to be hers!). I'll have to take a pic once they're all piped - they look pretty impressive with just the fondant, can't wait to see what they look like all done!!
• I also cut and cleaned 6 lbs of broccoli, made a buttermilk dressing, and mixed it all up with a red onion. This broccoli salad recipe was courtesy of Smitten Kitchen.
• Tonight I went and picked up a couple cases of wine for my Dad, got some more beagle food, worked on some laundry, ran the dishwasher and unloaded it, and cut out the pom-poms and commenced on packing the RAV. Holy cow, I've been busy. All that and I had pulled pork waiting for the husband in the crock pot when he got home. Am I good or am I good?

Showers are fun but they are hard work, dude! Can't wait to get back to when the only thing I'm responsible for is feeding myself and that beagle, and making sure Dog gets her potty breaks!!!