After we got the menu ironed out, and I had a list of the food the other girls were bringing – I matched them up with Dr. Seuss names.  This is what I came up with:

• Hash Brown Nests – Horton’s Nests
• Mini Cinnamon Rolls – Seussical Rolls
• Apple Juice – Beezlenut Splash
• Deviled Eggs & Ham – Green Eggs & Ham
• French Toast Casserole - Katroo Cake Bake
• Granola & Yogurt – Sneetch Treats
• Fruit – Truffula Fruit
• Biscuits – Who Cakes
• Gravy – Yot in a Pot

Now, we were in business.  He fired up the hot glue gun and started with the foam ball.  It went together perfectly well and I was in love! Then Todd started with one of the plastic ball Truffula trees.  He put the hot glue on and I heard an awful sizzling sound followed quickly by the sound of air escaping.  Uh-oh!  Not good…….. apparently plastic balls do not like hot glue.  They are not friends!  Todd managed to mostly plug the hole with the hot glue as it cooled but the red Truffula Tree started to droop.  I kinda wanted to cry, but it did not go completely flat, just wasn’t perfectly round.  Ok, I could deal with that.  He was scared to try it again with the other plastic ball Truffula tree, but we didn’t have much choice, I told him not to use as much hot glue.  This one didn’t bust, thank goodness! Last thing was to secure them in the red metal buckets.  Todd used florist foam to secure them and then covered the base with rice.

Now, for the How-To instructions.  The food label cards, I created in Photoshop.  I found these fabulous digital papers at Etsy, Thing 1 and Thing 2.  It is really not easy finding Dr. Seuss printables.  There are digital kits with the Dr. Seuss colors, but none that included the Dr. Seuss character images, copyright issues I’m sure!

After I bought the first set of digital papers, a steal at $1.99!  I found another set of digital papers on Forever Joy Designs blog.

I then turned to Google to find the Dr. Suess characters to add to my food label cards.  I found lots and lots of images, it was hard choosing which ones to use.  Also, I realized that none of them were .png files which meant that I had to edit every single one in Photoshop.  Some of them I also had to alter the colors or even add the colors.  After all that work, I wondered if someone might want to use the characters I found and altered.  If that someone is you, you can download them from my Free Printables page.

The banner I created with a cutting file template from www.thedigichick.com called Banners Set 1.  This would be a lot simpler if I had the Silhouette Cameo that is on my Wish List, but for now I use Photoshop and clip whatever digital scrapbook paper I want to use to the banner, print then cut out.  For my banner, I used “Oh Happy Day” so we could use it for something else besides a baby shower in the future.

I decorated the red metal buckets with some other digital files I found online.  This was a freebie pdf file from this blog, Wanessa Carolina Creations.  She has sooooo many amazing free printables for parties!  You must go take a look!!

With all of those ideas floating around in my head, I went to work first on figuring out the food.  The trick was that this was a breakfast, so a lot of the typical baby shower food would not really work.  Also, I was only responsible for part of the food.  I decided to make a couple of things from my Pinterest board, Yummy Nummy, Mini Cinnamon Rolls and Hash Brown Muffins.

Both of these were scrumptious!  The cinnamon rolls were the bigger hit, and they are oh so easy!!  Love those kind of recipes!  I mentioned that I thrive on last-minute pressure, right?  Ok, so it was the night before the breakfast about 7:00 or so when I started the hash brown muffins, which I cleverly re-named Hash Brown Nests (to go along with Horton Hears a Who, which I will explain more later)  Anyway, the nests required two steps to make them.  First you have to mix some seasoning and cheese with the hash browns and smash some of the mixture into the mini-muffin pan, create a well with them and bake.  Then the second step involves adding egg, more cheese and bacon and baking again.  A bit tedious, especially when I needed to make about !  Todd came in after I had been working on them for a while and innocently asked if he could help.  Well, yes, yes I think you can!!  I put him to work starting the mini cinnamon rolls.  Those really were easy, but that’s not the reason I gave him that task!  He is really quite brilliant in the kitchen!  Anyway, the cinnamon rolls started with tubes of crescent rolls.  The directions said to smooth the crescent roll dough together to form rectangles of dough, brush with butter, and spread on brown sugar and cinnamon.  That was the easy part…….next step was to roll the dough up into a log and then cut into little pinwheels.  That was a bit harder than I thought it would be!  Anyway, he got them all cut and into the mini-muffin pans and into the oven.  Hooray!  Then without me realizing what he was doing, he cleaned his mess up and put away all the ingredients and asked how he could help with the hash brown nests that I was still laboring over.  I looked at him with a quizzical look and said well, we will need more than 18 mini cinnamon rolls!!  He said really?  how many??  Oh, I don’t know maybe -90 or so?!?!?  There are about 40 teachers after all, and they are bite sized!  Uh-oh, he just shook his head and went back to the pantry to get the ingredients again.  Several hours later, almost midnight, we finished the last of the cinnamon rolls and hash brown nests.  Hurray!    Here are the recipes if you’d like to try these recipes yourself.

Mini Cinnamon Rolls with Maple Icing

Makes 16 mini cinnamon rolls

Ingredients:

• 1-8oz tube crescent roll dough
• 2 Tablespoons butter
• cinnamon
• brown sugar

For the maple icing:

• 1 teaspoon maple syrup
• 1 Tablespoon skim milk
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar

1. Preheat oven according to crescent roll dough package directions. Layout half the dough (4 triangles) and pinch all the seams together. Flip over and pinch the seams on the back side together too.

2. Using a rolling pin, smooth the seams and roll the dough into a square about 1/4? thick. Brush with half the butter, and sprinkle with as much cinnamon and brown sugar as you want. Roll into a log and cut into 8 pieces.

3. Place mini cinnamon rolls into a non-stick sprayed mini muffin tin. Repeat steps 1 and 2 with the other half of the crescent roll dough. Bake according to package directions.

4. Meanwhile whisk together maple syrup and milk in a bowl. Add in powdered sugar until desired consistency is reached. Drizzle over warm cinnamon rolls.

Hash Brown Nests

• (24oz) bag of thawed hash browns
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
• 2 tbs oil
• 1/3 c shredded cheddar cheese
• 6-8 eggs
• Bacon bits
• Cheese, to taste

Mix together the hash browns, salt, pepper, oil and cheese.  Put a spoonful of the mixture in each cup of a well greased muffin tin, and make a well in the center.

Bake at 425°F for 15-18 minutes, cover with foil if the edges appear to be getting too brown.

Now, lower the oven to 350°F. Meanwhile, beat eggs and then pour a bit of the egg onto the cooked hashbrowns.  Sprinkle some cheese and bacon bits on top.

Bake for about 13-16 minutes.  Gently slide a knife along the edges, and pull up with a fork.

Today was the day for our session.  I carefully picked out coordinating clothes for everyone yesterday and had them all hanging up and ready today.  Todd ironed the pants and shirts for the boys, and everyone was ready to go by 10 til or so.  That is when things started to fall apart.  Caeden was playing with a highlighter that Lael’s friend had given her, when WHOOPS, {uh-oh Mom, I got highlighter on my shirt”}  His white shirt, of course it would be white, but what was I thinking??!?  Caeden can’t wear white for 2 minutes without getting it dirty.  I might have freaked, just a bit – you know what I mean, I had planned out the whole family wardrobe and now, Caeden’s white shirt had a big pink streak on it!!!  I might have yelled a little.  Anyone who knows Caeden knows that he doesn’t respond well to yelling. Todd went to Caeden’s closet and I went to the laundry room.  Todd found another white shirt, I found a Clorox bleach pen.  I used the pen on the mark – and presto!  it worked!  pink highlighter gone!!  yippee, picture saved.  Todd said, let’s just bring the extra one in case the bleach turns the shirt yellow or something.  I protested ‘it’s too small!’  He brought it anyway, {insert smooches to Todd here, his insistence truly did save the picture}

We arrived at the photo shoot exactly on time, which in itself is a miracle for the Anderson family.  They had already finished the family session before us, so we went right in.  I introduced everyone and as I looked at Lael, I noticed she had a smear of ketchup on her face, leftover remnants of a Chick-Fil-A lunch with a friend.  How lovely!  As I’m using a wet wipe they provided {thanks to Melissa for thinking of such things!}, I notice that Lael is wearing her glasses instead of her contacts.  I know how hard it is to photograph people in glasses, that glare is so annoying!  So, I wanted her in contacts.  Oh well, Melissa said she could work around them.

I turned to Caeden to try to flatten down that annoying double cowlick on the back of his head, which is a total lost cause by the way!  His hair was the least of our problems though, it was his shirt.  Instead of the pink highlighter mark, whited out by the bleach pen, we now had a purple streak.  Oh really?!?  I guess the bleach reacted with the highlighter ink and turned it purple.  Wow!  This is the part where Todd saved the picture.  He gave Caeden the other white shirt and he changed.  Whew!

When she started getting us into places to take the first family picture, she called Caeden over and that’s when I noticed his shoes.  Caeden is really hard on shoes.  This is a pair he got right before Christmas.  They are not cheap shoes, but he still manages to trash them.  This particular pair has a complete blow-out on the toe of his left foot.  I mean, a real blow-out, you can see almost the entire top of his foot!  Melissa suggested that he take them off and go barefoot.  Yes, yes, I think that’s a good idea!

Lael was next to get into position.  This is when Melissa notices an armband Lael has been wearing since we went to the zoo about two weeks ago.  It is kind of like temporary tatoos that kids get – they want to wear them as long as possible, long after whatever the tatoo originally was has washed off to the point that you have no idea what it might have been.  She has not wanted to take off the armband.  She didn’t want to take off the armband today.  Too bad!  I don’t want a family portrait with a grungy zoo armband clearly visible!  She tried to pull it off without messing it up.  It wasn’t working, Todd told her in no uncertain terms that it had to come off and started tugging at it, and it tore.  Waterworks started spewing followed closely by great big heaving sobs.  Really?  Over a zoo armband?!?  I told her to suck it up, we had a happy family portrait to get made!!!

At this point, Melissa gave us a bit of wisdom that was quite profound.  Are you ready for this?  Here it is:  No discipline on Picture Day!  I should also add to that, no harsh words, no dirty looks, no snide comments and above all don’t expect your children to wear white!  She then proceeded to shoo Todd, me and Chace out of the room, and decided to start with individual shots of Caeden.  She told Lael she needed her help to make Caeden laugh.  This was right up Lael’s alley, a helper!  Oh yes, she’s a great helper!  So, Melissa worked some more of her magic, got Lael to forget the armband and got some great shots of Caeden.

While we were out in the hall waiting, I look over at Chace.  He has been a gem through this whole thing.  He didn’t argue about the clothes I picked out for him.  He took Caeden with him this morning to get haircuts for them both.  He shaved off the beard he’s been working on for I don’t know how long and even most of the sideburns.  Not all of them, mind you.  I asked him about it and he said I did shave them.  Hmmmm, really?  then what is that 1.5″ patch of hair there on your cheeks?  Oh well, there are worse things than a teenager with sideburns!  What was bothering me was the grey undershirt he was wearing instead of a white one!  His shirt was white with blue pinstripes, and you could clearly see the grey underneath!

The last problem wasn’t really a problem at all, just a logistical problem of positioning.  We have 5 in our family, not huge but since Chace is 16 he is as big as both Todd and me.  So, the usual family formations weren’t working all that great.  She kept trying different places with different people and different directions.  Put your left arm behind her, sit cross-cross applesauce, no wait, get on your knees, everybody squish up close to each other, Dad sit up straighter, lean forward, lean over, peek over his shoulder, etc…….

Finally, we were done!  Whew, I think it went well after all the little problems.  I can’t wait to see the proofs!

Now, the movie – it was definitely funny.  Really funny.  Really raunchy and jaw-dropping in parts too.  There were several scenes of nudity that will be forever seared in my brain.  One especially involving lots of jiggly body parts of senior citizens! {insert eeeewwww face here}  There was also lots and lots of cursing.  Cursing in movies is somewhat annoying to me.  I always think that they just add the curse words to the script as an automatic.  Like they couldn’t think of other ways to express the sentiment.  Ok, so in this movie, the cursing was very frequent and I started to think that the mass amounts of it was in a sense just for shock value, or just as a way to sort of make fun of the movie itself.

Ok, so all of that aside, that is not the reason for this post.  The reason is that I was seriously disturbed by the fact that after we got settled in our seats, a family {yes, at least they looked like a family} came in and surveyed the theater which was quite full.  There were 4 of them, and Todd and Iwere the only two in our row, so we had seats available next to us.  They clambered over us, and while doing this I realized that it was not a typical family, just a grandmother type, and 3 boys, ages approximately 13, 10 and 7.  I thought it was weird, but didn’t contemplate it much.  That is, until the movie started and I began to realize this was no place for children!  It was not even a movie that I would feel comfortable watching with my 16 yr old son!  So, here I am, right next to the youngest.  The movie gets more and more inappropriate and then I start feeling uncomfortable.  I don’t really feel right laughing at some of the stuff on the screen with this child beside me.  At one point there is conversation of sex, where the actor is trying to pump himself up to do the deed (no actual sex scenes, thank goodness!) and the entire theater is laughing, the boys in the row with us start laughing too, including the 7 yr old!!  Really!?!  Please stop laughing at something I pray that you have NO knowledge of.  I was hoping that he was just laughing because everyone else was.  Anyway, this was basically just a rant at nobody in particular – I just couldn’t believe that someone would bring children to that movie.  Maybe she didn’t know it would be that bad, I certainly didn’t!  But, 10 minutes in when there was full frontal nudity, that should have been her first clue that this was inappropriate!

Low Country Boil

Ingredients

• Old Bay Seasoning TM to taste
• 5 pounds new potatoes
• 3 (16 ounce) packages cooked kielbasa sausage, cut into 1 inch pieces
• 8 ears fresh corn, husks and silks removed
• 5 pounds whole crab, broken into pieces
• 4 pounds fresh shrimp, peeled and deveined
• newspapers
• beer

Directions

1. Heat a large pot of water over an outdoor cooker, or medium-high heat indoors. Add Old Bay Seasoning to taste, and bring to a boil. Add potatoes, and sausage, and cook for about 10 minutes. Add the corn and crab; cook for another 5 minutes, then add the shrimp when everything else is almost done, and cook for another 3 or 4 minutes.
2. Drain off the water, and pour the contents out onto a picnic table covered with newspaper. Grab a paper plate and a beer and enjoy!

I printed off some cute photo props and pretty much demanded that everyone choose two or three and have their photo taken.  I love the way these turned out!!!