God thinks I'm hilarious

I am alive. I promise. But man, life is eating me alive!

You'd think with all the snow we've been having, I'd be blogging up a storm because there's nothing else to do. In reality, I'm still recovering from the holidays in terms of getting the house back in some semblance of order. Seriously. It's pathetic, I know, especially since we have less than 1000 sq ft in our little home, but it just feels like there's something that's been happening all the time, or at least not in the way we planned.

Take my best friend's baby shower last week. We'd decided back in December to shoot for President's Day Weekend Sunday (that totally made more sense in my head) because the long weekend would allow for recovery for everyone, plus Nonna-to-be would be able to come up and not take vacation days. One of the SIL/aunts found a carpool to hitch a ride back from college in Ohio, the two other planners/executors/friends D and K had their tasks lined up, and BFF's limited mobility grandmother was going to let us use her house to host so she could actually attend.

You know what they say about best-laid plans, right?

The snow wreaked havoc first. Friend D was stuck in Wisconsin - a business trip to Milwaukee that should have ended Wednesday was suddenly extended to Saturday afternoon due to canceled flights (plus, she learned things about her coworkers she had no need or desire to know). SIL's carpool canceled, leaving her in Ohio. Friend K's boss decided to tell her and her team at the last minute that they were all going to have to work the whole weekend. And finally, BFF's grandmother went to her cardiologist on Saturday, who told her that due to fluid build-up around her heart, she was going to have to lose 10 lbs over the weekend, so she backed out of hosting.

...

Clearly, no one is at fault for any of these things - weather happens, work happens, health problems happen - but the timing was remarkable.

It wasn't all bad - the weather forced Nate's wisdom teeth surgery to be moved, so he and his brother took the kids up to a friend's place to visit their new daughter while I made a banner (and got to use my sewing machine that I got for Christmas!). BFF's aunt, who had hosted the bridal shower, let us use her place at the last minute, and everyone who had said they would come was able to make it to the alternate location. My sister lives close by and was able to come over to help. Friend D's flight didn't have to get re-rescheduled, so she came over shortly after landing and we got everything done.

And nobody died. Winning!

How about some pictures?

The banner! You'd never know I hadn't sewn in 15 years.

Cookies as favors.

About those cookies: I used the cookie recipe from Sweet Sugarbelle, plus her tips and tricks for icing, but used Alton Brown's royal icing recipe. I bought the cookie cutters from Sur la Table, though there's a funny story about that onesie...

I went to Sur la Table (dangerous, dangerous store) with my mom to get specifically the bottle and carriage cutters, plus some other things for decorating, but felt that two cookies was odd and there needed to a third one. I'd seen a cute thing involving a baby foot being iced on a plain square or circle, but couldn't find a cheap circle that was, well, still a circle. So my mom went through and pulled out what she said is a t-shirt. I looked at it and noticed what it actually is, but figured it works. 

I went to check out and plopped all my goodies on the counter. The cashier looked at everything - icing tips and couplers, bottles for royal icing, gel food coloring, cookie cutters - and remarked, "Looks like someone's going to be baking!"

"Yeah, my best friend's baby shower is this weekend, and we're doing cookie favors. I'm really excited!"

"I bet!" She picked up the onesie cutter and scanned it, looked at the screen, and raised an eyebrow. "That's an...interesting...choice."

I should tell you now that the "onesie" is actually a tombstone, just flipped upside down.

In fact, I would flip the picture to show you, but my husband saw all the onesies lined up getting decorated and thought they were male genitalia. "I know it's a baby boy, but don't you think that's a little...um..."

It's a onesie. And they were delicious.

Here, have a picture of a toddler in the snow for fun.

There was a lot of convincing that had to be done to get her to do this.