Pretty Easy Fancy Desserts: In Honor of My New Nephew

I have a new nephew! In honor of his birth his proud parents are making a small party for him tonight called a shalom zachor. I wanted to make something festive, decorative and yummy for his welcoming that is also easy to transport... so I made chocolate and sprinkle coated marshmallow pops and chocolate cover pretzels. They were not too hard and look O-So-Pretty.

Here is how you too can impress your family and friends.

Fancy Marshmallow Pops
-Lollipop sticks
-Marshmallows
-White chocolate chips
-Sprinkles
-Food coloring

Prep by placing the marshmallows onto the lollipop sticks. This is really simple because the marshmallows are sticky! One of the things I hate about cake pops is trying to get the cake-ball to just stay on the *&#! stick.

Then melt your white chocolate according to the package instructions or be lazy like me and nuke em. I also microwave chocolate on about half power and continuously mix until it is melted. Once the chocolate is melted add food coloring. Then dip your marshmallow and sprinkle away.

Here is a hint - if you are having issues with your chocolate not being as melty and easy to work with as you would like - ADD OIL. Use only canola or vegetable and add a drip at a time until the chocolate is workable. After coating the marshmallows I added more oil to my chocolate mix to thin it out enough so I could place it into a plastic baggie with a tiny hole cut into the side for writing and decorating.

Once you dip, leave the marshmallows to dry on wax paper or a surface that they wont stick to. Wait for them to dry fully and enjoy!

Chocolate Covered Pretzels 
-Pretzel rods
-White chocolate
-Food coloring

To prep, take the pretzels out of the bag. Then melt your white chocolate and add food coloring like you would for the marshmallow pops. Coat the pretzels, I like to use a spoon and load the pretzels up and then scrap off the extra chocolate. Dry on wax paper so you can easily remove the sticks once they cool down.

As I stated above for the decorating and writing add extra oil to your chocolate so it is easier to work with. To make this design I used my left over light blue and added more blue food coloring and oil to the mix, I also needed to microwave it a tad longer so it would remelt. I cut a tiny hole in a small baggie and filled it with chocolate and decorated away.

My disposable decorating bag!

It's too bad my new nephew can't take part in devouring these treats, luckily for him I think his two older siblings and many cousins will eat enough for him too.

Under the Sea Birthday Party

Our under the sea themed birthday party was a huge success! And I am so in love with the under the sea decorations that our apartment is going to look like a fish bowl for the foreseeable future. I should probably start renting it out as an event space, think our snotty neighbors would be mad?

If you have an under the sea party coming up I hope the following photos and quick tutorials can help you steal some of these great ideas! 

Decorations

• I searched google images for under the sea cartoon creatures and then using photoshop colored and sized them to my needs.The most tedious part was cutting each fish out and affixing it to the wall.
• I made the Happy birthday sign using photoshop as well. I found a photo of water that I liked that had lots of bubbles and was high resolution and then I recolored it and imported into letter outlines I had created. I cut these out for a long time too!
• The fishes that are hanging from the ceiling are hand-me-downs from my sister's bat mitzvah... she is now 25! 
• Streamers galore! I used green colored streamers for the seaweed and 3 different color blues for the water hanging from the ceiling.   
• DO twist the green streamers while making the seaweed
• DON'T even try to make the blue streamers even, water isn't even and it is not worth your time!
• DO have someone handing you pieces of pre-cut tape, it will move things along!

I started putting up decorations a week before the party but saved the ceiling for last. When T woke up on Sunday morning I took to see the completed living room. She looked up and then at me with wide eyes and said - WOOOOWWWW!! Totally worth the neck cramps!

Food

I am only going to tell you about the dessert table, because my lunch food was not themed...

Oysters with pearls

• Buy your favorite stuffed white sandwich cookie. Ours are some no-name store brand and I chose them because I liked the shape
• Split the cookie in half and remove the cream and set it aside
• Make/buy frosting. I bought strawberry because it was the perfect pink, it ended up tasting like fluoride from the dentist office, but people ate them up anyway
• Pipe frosting onto one half of the cookie
• Shape the cookie cream into a tiny ball and place on top of the pink frosting
• Add the top half of cookie and you have an oyster!

 Sea creature cupcakes

• Make a vanilla cake mix and fill blue cupcake liners 1/3 the way full. 
• Add some blue food coloring to the remaining batter and swirl 1 tbsp of blue cake mix into each cupcake so when you bite in, you get a blue surprise
• Buy or make vanilla/white frosting and tint it a light blue 
• Fill a zip lock bag with the frosting and cut one of the corners off. This make a very easy piping bag that you don't need to clean!
• Frost the cupcakes
• Add crushed graham cracker crumbs to make the sand
• Buy chocolate melts and an aqua themed mold and make some fun shapes to add to the cupcakes

 Whale Birthday Cake 

• Bake your kid's favorite flavor cake - for T that means chocolate! Use 2 - 9" round pans and then layer the cakes filling the gap with blue frosting!
• Make sure that some of the blue frosting goops out of the middle
• Tint white frosting to make it a light blue
• Frost the outside of the cake with the light blue frosting, you will notice the darker blue that came out of the sides of the cake mixing to create the water look. Add extra darker blue frosting in little dots and incorporate to give the look of water
• Use a stencil or free hand the whale 

Water Melon Shark

My dad made this and it came out awesome! 

• Watch this youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTh64oFeyos for more info on how to make a shark

Arts and Crafts: Octopi and Jellyfish 

Toilet Paper Roll Octopus and Paper Bag Jelly Fish

• Set out protective floor coverings 
• Let the kids paint toilet paper rolls and paper bags - use washable paint! 
• Add googly eyes
• After the paint dries cut eight legs into the toilet paper roll and bunch of tentacles for the jellyfish

Our new Octopi friends

A Jellyfish Selfie

Having fun making a mess!

Thank you Aunt Davita! This prep takes a team and I could not do this without you.  

Thank you Nana and Auntie Jordana for starting T's obsession with Baby Beluga in the Deep Blue Sea which lead to her fascination with aquatic creatures and ultimately this perfect party. 

Party On!

Our Hasbro Birthday House Party

This past Saturday night we celebrated my husband’s birthday with an awesome Hasbro Game Night Birthday House Party. People asked, what exactly does that mean? What is a House Party? Was it actually sponsored by Hasbro? Why, yes it was just that – we hosted a HouseParty sponsored by Hasbro!

About a year and a half ago I joined this wonderful website called HouseParty.com. The idea of the website is to promote products through parties. This is not a Tupperware party style where you receive free products and guilt your friends into coming to your home to dish out money to get their own.  House Parties are advertisements for the company, the host gets free products and is obligated to show off the brand at a house party while friends just need to come and have a good time. Sometimes friends even get a free giveaway too- and they always leave with coupons!

I apply to host tons of parties and am selected infrequently, about 1 party every 6 months. I just checked my stats; I have applied to host a total of 24 parties and was chosen for 3! Not too Shabby, especially considering how awesome these parties are. Applying to host a party takes minimal effort, you fill out a quick questionnaire, post about how excite you are and share your applications with friends on Facebook and/or Twitter. You can also do extra stuff to increase your chances of being chosen as a host, like upload photos, videos or conversations. I am pretty sure that you are chosen based on luck and demographic, rather than the extras but why not, just in case!

Back to our most recent house party - My husband Dave’s birthday is at the beginning of November and he had a Golden Weekend (both Sat and Sun off). Dave is a General Surgery Residency Intern and this means that he practically never has off, so we really lucked out with this party. This was actually the second Hasbro Game Night we were chosen for and we LOVE games so we were psyched. We invited guest and then once we found out Dave was going to be off we morphed our Game Night into Dave’s Bday Bash as well.

House Party then sent us our party pack that came with four awesome Hasbro games – Catchphrase, Taboo, Funny or Die, and Draw Something. They also sent a box of Cheetos new product –a kosher cheddar puffed corn snack, some winner crowns, Hsabro cups, and coupons.   Now between the amazing party pack and all of the snacks, candy, beer, spiked punch and bean dip I made for the party, I am sure you are thinking I wish I went to that party… but it gets even better. The PR department for Hasbro reached out to me and arranged to send their Hasbro PARTY BUS to our already rocking party! Yes, I already thought hosting these parties was super cool and this just blew me away! All of our guests had a truly memorable night, and my husband is going to have a tough time topping this when my birthday rolls around in January!

Playing Catch Phrase on the party bus

Soooo cool! 

I love HouseParty.com and if you sign up and are chosen to host we want an invitation! My sister in law is hosting her very first House Party in less than two weeks and we can’t wait to see her Duplo Lego Party Pack and play at her party. 

I even made this cute Sponsorship sign for our door