Snoopy Baby Shower

I meant to write this post ages ago, my baby shower was back in September. But better late than never!

As anyone reading my previous posts on my bridal shower and the various baby showers that I've assisted with, I love event planning. And I've always known that, if I were lucky enough to have a baby, I would want a Snoopy-themed baby shower.

This presents its own difficulties, as many Peanuts-themed items are becoming rare and expensive. And the ones that are available are more naturally geared towards children's parties, and I didn't really like the look of them. So instead, most of the items at my shower were handmade by myself or my family. Here is a quick rundown of what we did, in case anyone else out there would like to do something similar.


First, the invitation. I made this myself, and I think it came out rather well:

I'm not much of a photo editor, and clearly not a graphic designer. But I was actually able to use PowerPoint for everything I needed. First, decide on the size of your invitation. I decided on 5x7", which is size A7. I ordered my paper products from Paper Source. Once you know what size you want, you can go into PowerPoint and adjust the slide height and width to match (Design --> Page Setup). I would suggest adding an extra 1/4" to each side (5.25x7.25") as a bleed section.

 I found a Peanuts font online, to get the lettering right. Unfortunately, this font has no numbers, and the numbers from fonts I already had on my computer didn't look right, so I used the Waltograph font for the numbers, which paired nicely with the Peanuts font.

I got all of the images on the invitation by googling "baby snoopy" and I used PowerPoint to remove the original color and tint everything blue (Format --> Recolor --> Light Variations, while clicked on the image, I chose the light blue option for everything here). I also used PowerPoint to adjust the contrast and brightness (also under Recolor), which helped to sharpen the edges of the images. Lastly, I made sure the backgrounds for the two images flanking the text were transparent (Recolor --> Set transparent color).

I added a border for the bleed section, so that variations in printing wouldn't cut into my actual design.

Once I had the design the way I wanted it, I saved the slide as a jpeg: make sure everything in the slide is grouped, then right-click the slide and select "save as picture." PowerPoint caps the resolution of jpeg exports, so I followed these instructions to change the resolution of jpegs saved in PowerPoint to 300 dpi, it was easy to do and made a huge difference in the quality of the invitation!

For the favors, I decided to make a Greek cookie called Kourambiethes, which I also made for my bridal shower. I'm pretty proud of the packaging, they are little Snoopy houses:

This is a demo bag. Yes, I know Snoopy's house is actually all red, but I couldn't find red bags that were a close enough match to the tops, so I went with white. Red, white and baby blue ended up being my shower colors, and they looked great.

The bottoms are small white paper bags (I think in the vicinity of 2x3"). The tops are made from red construction paper (basically a trapezoid butterfly that folds over the tops of the bags). The Snoopy and Woodstock image was downloaded from Google images and sized to match the scale of the bags. They were printed on white cardstock, and cut out by my Dad, before being attached to the red tops. The tops were then folded over the filled bags, and voila! Snoopy favors!

My dad made tons of these, this isn't even half of the favors, he made well over 100!

My MIL made centerpieces for the tables. She makes these neat centerpiece/favor combination using these:

Clear tubes filled with color-coordinated M&M's, topped with white carnations and color-coordinated curling ribbon. These treats go into a bowl, the top flowers present a unified front, and it looks something like this:

Then a themed object can be placed on a stalk in the center of the bowl. My MIL and SIL painted bird houses to look like Snoopy houses, and put little plush Snoopies and Woodstocks on them:

Beautiful! I don't have a full length pic of the centerpieces, but there were also Snoopy balloons from Amazon that looked like this:

Here is what the table looked like all set up:

I also made an Activity Booklet with puzzles and such. It is in pdf format, but anyone is welcome to take pages out of it as they wish:

You'll obviously want a different first page, but the rest of the pages can be used for anyone. It can be tinted purple for a girl.

I hope anyone out there looking to plan a Snoopy shower got some ideas! There are tons of other great ideas out there, I wish I could have done more!

Peanut M&M Cookie Bars

Yes. These. These are my Peanut M&M cookies in a bar form. Identical batter, but a lot less time and fuss. They are chewy, so they do lack that cookie crunch, but they taste delicious nonetheless. I can't decide which I like better, in truth, but I know for certain that when I am short on time, I will definitely be making the bars.  I gave a detailed workflow of preparing the batter in my cookie post, so I won't rehash it here. Instead, I will pick up the recipe where it diverges from the cookie recipe:



Rather than use a cookie scoop to make individual cookies, evenly press the batter into a greased 9x13" pan like so:

Bake for about 30 minutes until golden:

Then you can cut into squares and enjoy. Easy! And yummy! The peanut M&Ms add a wonderful texture and taste to the bars. These were gone from the cookie platter in no time at all!

As you can see from my pics, I got 42 squares from the one pan. I know the squares are small if you cut so many, but honestly, they are pretty rich, so small ones work well. I think larger bars would be overwhelming to eat because they are so much thicker than cookies. But that's just a suggestion.


Peanut M&M Cookie Bars

Ingredients

• 2 sticks of butter, softened
• 1/2 C sugar
• 1/2 C brown sugar, packed
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 C flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 3/4 C pecans, chopped small (but not fine) -- optional
• 1-12.6 oz bag Peanut M&M's in Christmas colors (or holiday colors of your choice)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Coat a 9x13" pan with cooking spray (optional: line pan with aluminum first for ease of lifting out bars)
3. Cream softened butter and sugars until fluffy
4. Add in egg, salt and vanilla and mix until combined
5. Add in flour and baking soda, and mix until just combined
6. Add in pecans and peanut M&M's, and stir until combined evenly
7. Press batter evenly and gently into pan
8. Bake at 350F for 30-35 minutes, until golden
9. Cool completely, cut into squares (can lift out of pan after 10 minutes if you lined pan with aluminum)

Rocky Road Candy

Here's a quick and easy holiday candy recipe that can be made entirely in your microwave. It is a great and tasty treat, and especially easy to do with kids!

Rocky road ice cream was invented in 1929 by William Dreyer, who was in the ice cream business with his partner Joseph Edy -- and yes that is today's Edy's ice cream for those of you in the east, and Dreyer's ice cream for those of you in the west -- the ice cream is marketed under 2 names to honor both founders. As the story goes, William Dreyer added walnuts and bits of marshmallow (snipped with his wife's scissors) to chocolate ice cream. Prior to this point in time, the only ice cream flavors available i he US were vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, so Dreyer's new flavor became a hit. Dreyer and Edy decided to call the flavor "Rocky Road" as a nod to the Great Depression, and the flavor took off from there.



This version of rocky road candy is made with peanuts, but you can substitute any nuts (or any mix-ins in general) that you want. The original recipe came out of one of those little recipe mini mags, but I tore the page out, so I don't recall which one. The original recipe can also be found on the Eagle Brand site.

First, melt some semi-sweet chips, butter and sweetened condensed milk in the microwave. Do this on high in the microwave at one minute intervals, stirring after each minute until the chips are dissolved. When the chocolate is close to melted, shorten the intervals to 30 seconds.

Let the chocolate cool down about 5 minutes.

Then, combine the peanuts and marshmallows in a large bowl, and stir in the chocolate

Mix until well-combined, and spread in wax paper-lined 9"x13" pan.

Chill in the fridge until solid (around 2 hours), and then cut into squares. This candy can spend several days at room temperature.

Because this is such an easy treat, requiring no baking, it is great as an activity to do with kids, or to whip up if you want a quick treat to bring to your office or give as gifts.

It is easily customizable, I used marshmallows and peanuts, but you could easily substitute whatever you want, in whatever amounts you wish.


Rocky Road Candy
(Printable Recipe)

Ingredients

• 2C (12 oz) semisweet chocolate chips
• 1-14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
• 2 tbls butter
• 2 C dry roasted peanuts, salted
• 1-10.5 oz package mini marshmallows

Directions

1. In microwave safe bowl, combine chips, butter and condensed milk
2. Microwave on high in minute and half minute intervals, stirring after each interval until smooth
3. Let cool 5 minutes
4. Combine peanuts and marshmallows in large bowl. Add chocolate and stir to combine.
5. Spread mixture in a wax paper-lined 9"x13" pan, and refrigerate 2 hours
6. Lift candy out of pan and cut into squares. Cover loosely and store at room temperature.