Jungle Baby!

I love taking Fridays off. I love sitting on the couch in my big, purple, fuzzy robe with a cup of Island Coconut coffee with Coconut Cream creamer watching Challenge on Food Network after successfully paying bills and realizing that life's really not bad at all.

Translation: I'm procrastinating. There are 8 dozen cupcakes to be made today for my future sister-in-law's bridal shower tomorrow and I still haven't made my grocery list.

On a positive note, this gives me some much needed time to tell you about my friend's baby shower!

You remember Dan's best friend and his wife from "A Dinner Party Before Vegas." She was the one that LOVED peanut butter and chocolate.

Last weekend, 50 of her closest friends got together to congratulate her and "ooh" and "aah" over all of the cute baby clothes and the other stuff that's completely foreign to me - not being a mother myself - but is apparently necessary to have with a new baby. (Side note: Sitting at a table with "the wives," all of whom have kids, I learned a lot - especially that I'm not quite ready for kids. But that's ok, because there are lots out there to spoil and give back to their parents!)

My friend had chosen a jungle animal sports theme for the baby's room - ADORABLE! - and her mother-in-law asked me for 6 dozen cupcakes in that same theme for the shower. If you know my husband's family, you know this means giraffes, but since I'm not fully assimilated yet, it also means lions and zebras and elephants and monkeys.

With my friend's permission, this is how it turned out:

Pretty Pretty Pregnant Lady!

Didn't her mother-in-law do a great job with the decorations? And that's only the dessert table. Each of the other tables had a stuffed animal, a zebra plant, an African violet and a mini football or baseball. The whole room was completely decked out and 100% jungle sports themed, just like the nursery.

Speaking of mother-in-laws outdoing themselves, mine dove right in and helped me decorate the cupcakes!

Look at her go!

She added green grass frosting to every last one of the white almond strawberry cupcakes. After she was done, she decided that she had so much fun that she wanted to go out and get her own set of tips! I was thrilled! So I sent her home with a set of extra tips that I had on hand. I think that works out perfectly...especially for the next time I need some help ;)

I'm assuming, at this point, that you'd like to see a close-up of the cupcakes and you're probably curious about the other flavors - like why on earth would I do white almond strawberry when my friend is just crazy about peanut butter and chocolate. No fear! There were plenty of peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes! And traditional red velvet and cream cheese cupcakes.

So cute!

:A note on the peanut butter frosting - it's the best frosting recipe ever! For my mother-in-law's birthday a couple weeks ago, I tried to make swiss meringue chocolate buttercream and it was AMAZING! I found the base recipe over at These Peas are Hollow via Pinterest (naturally). The only note I'd add to her recipe is to add the melted chocolate last. For the peanut butter version that I used for the shower, I tried to use the Reese's peanut butter chips, but ultimately ended up just using peanut butter because I couldn't get them to melt the right way - besides, nothing tastes like peanut butter quite like peanut butter.

Challenge is over now, so I guess it's time to get ready and get to the grocery store to get started on the next shower. I hope those turn out as well as the baby shower. Wish me luck!