Shower

My youngest sister is getting married in a few weeks to this guy in mid July.  He is awesome and we adore him ... almost as much as my sister.  

We threw a shower for her at my mom's house.  Suzanne did most of the work, planning the decorations, and really fun games.  She did a great job of helping everyone in the room get to know Stuart and Barb.  She had Stu come near the end of the shower ... he brought her flowers ... so people could get to know him a little bit too.  They told how he proposed, a story I hadn't heard before.  It really was a lovely shower.  To explain the props below, I'll have to explain the games.  The mingler was the game where you have a famous couple on your back and you have to talk with people around you to figure out who it is.  Everyone had fun with this.  The next game was a bit of a quiz for Barb.  Suz sent Stuart a dozen or more questions and the test was to see if Barb could answer them the same way Stu would.  All the guests were given thumbs up cards and thumbs down cards to show if they thought Barb would get it right or wrong.  Very fun. 

Here's a quick picture of almost everyone who came. All the W's are on the front row, including my sweet SIL seated to my left.  

Barb and Stu are really into supporting local growers and farmers, so where ever possible they are going with small local companies for their wedding plans.  We tried to do the same with the shower.  Where possible we used family recipes and farmers market produce.  Mary Ann brought beautiful bars of handmade olive oil soap from Lebanon that we gave as favors to all the attendees.  And I crocheted a dozen or more wash cloths that we paired with handmade brown sugar body scrub and a small wooden soap dish as game prizes.  The food was light and refreshing.  Don't you love how my SIL served the breakfast casserole ... jumbo cupcake liners worked perfectly and helped to stretch a single casserole enough to feed the entire group. 

We (my mom, sisters and I) went in together to purchase a spice collection from Penzey's Spices and cooking classes from a local culinary shop.  Stu's family, mainly his dad, is really into cooking - their family cook book is one of their prized family treasures ... something I didn't really know before I decided to put together a version of  this idea for them.  I included a combination of plastic sheet protectors, magnetic photo sheets, and 4x6 photo pockets to hold everything from printouts, and recipe cards to magazine tear sheets.  Then I printed a couple dozen recipes onto different digital recipes cards I collected from sources online (thank you Pinterest) and filled a good portion of the notebook with family favorites from our family and Stu's.  Hopefully it will be something she will use and morph over the years to suit her families needs.   

My Dad and brother were super troopers and took all eight grand children geo caching and to lunch while we entertained our guests and cleaned up.  The kids had a blast and discovered a new restaurant they want to take the dad's back to when we come for the wedding next month.