Peanut's Cookies for the Hospital

A year ago when we were expecting G I decided to have a Birth Day Party for him in the hospital.  I thought it would be fun to bake cookies and give them to family and friends that visited our little bundle.  I also liked the idea of giving my nurses a little treat for helping care for us. 

 

I wanted gender specific cookies so I baked twice as many peanut butter cookies as I needed.  I made a batch with pink and purple m&ms and another batch with blue m&ms.  Next, I designed two different labels.  One for "It's a Boy" and another for "It's a Girl".  Looking back, I laugh at how much effort I went to for this... but it was very important to me to celebrate our little bundle in a gender specific way.  I really like that I did this and I hope to be able to do it for our future babies.

I finished this project just in the nick of time!  My sister and I adhered the last labels to cookie bags on the evening of August 4th literally seconds before my water broke.  The timing is so ironic to me since this project was something so important to me to have finished in time for our little love.

 

I printed the design onto large adhesive mailing label, cut them out with a round scallop, and adhered them to paper cd sleeves that I used as a bag for the cookies.

 

For friends and family

For the labor/delivery and post partum nursing staffs

(I used the extra pink cookies for the nurses)

If anyone is interested in doing something similar- a couple of tips:

I baked all the cookies ahead of time and froze them in a large tupperware container.  Next I printed off labels for both a boy and a girl and adhered them to the cd sleeves.  When we went to the hospital I had a tub of cookies and an envelope of cookie packages ready to stuff.  It took 10 minutes one afternoon to stuff only the boy cookie packages and the remaining girl cookies went into a bag for the nurses.  All of the girl cookie label bags were technically wasted, but I did not mind since I wanted to have a streamlined procress for the hospital.  Also, it would best to not put the cookies into the cd sleeves too soon ahead of time since the greasiness of the cookie will bleed thru the paper after a few hours.

Meals for New Parents

 It's always fun to share a meal with family and friends and can be especially timely when someone has a new baby or is recovering from being sick or in the hospital. 

 

One of my ongoing projects this year has been researching, testing and creating recipes for last minute meals, meals to share, and also menu plans for the weeks following the arrival of a new baby.  Below are some of the best resources I've come across and wanted to share!

 

My favorite go-to resource for recipes and freezer cooking comes from the blog, Annie's Eats. I have tried dozens of her recipes (all delicious), and love her ideas about freezer cooking.  These are my favorite links:

Meals for New Parents

Stocking the Freezer

Stocking the Freezer: Tips and Tricks

Additionaly, I recently came across the blog, Take Them a Meal, and this post was particularly helpful with new ideas.  I already know I will be purusing this blog again soon!

 

After making a delicious meal I love to cap it off with a cute label.  Here are 2 resources I've used along with a link to the free printable :)

photo credit Le Partie Sugar

 

photo credit Embellish Goods

 

Finally, I've started doing occasional baking-in-bulk that I freeze for future use.  One of the things I like to make is quick bread.  For fun, I attach a label saying that it's from my son's kitchen-- Afterall, the bread will end up in the hands of the parents of one of his future friends!

 

Happy Cooking, my friends!

Birthday Sneak Peak

It will be a week before more birthday pictures are posted so until then,

here are a couple cute shots of our party boy!

 

Anticipation builds...

Gavin's birthday party is tomorrow morning and we are all very excited!  We will celebrate with some cake and ice cream and lots of fun in the backyard.  It has surprised me how much fun prepping his birthday party has been; I feel like its the first gift we've given him, or rather first time our talents have come together to make a surprise for him.  It probably feels like Christmas morning does for parents who've been up all night putting together a bike or doll house.

 

I've been crafting, D's been building, and G's been smiling and hanging out along side the fun.

 

Yesterday, while working on a party wreath, G literally could not get enough of the fun.  I think he thought the wreath was a toy or bumbo seat.  He kept trying to climb through it or sit in it.  It was so much more fun working on the wreath viewing it through little man's perspective :)