Walking Dead Dinner!!

SEASON PREMIER DAY IS FINALLY HERE!!
Ian and I have really grown to love this show and even though last season wasn't our favourite, I have high hopes for this season! Since Thanksgiving was the next day after the season premier, we decided to not host a Walking Dead Party like the last time, but instead just make a zombie themed dinner for us. So as soon as church was done, we ran to the car to get home and start cooking!
Here's what we had:

Toxic Zombie Guts (or Spritz Up with green food colouring)

Roasted Hand with Mashed Potatoes (or Meat Loaf with cheese and mashed potatoes)

And Dirt with Worms for dessert (or chocolate pudding, oreos, and gummy worms)

The dinner was yummy but kinda gross in that the hand really looked real! This was way easier than the party and no police were involved (last year, the decorations were so good that neighbors thought we were in trouble and called the police) so that was a relief!

And now we wait for the season premier that we have been waiting forever for! 

SURPRISE IAN!

For the past few weeks, I have been planning a surprise party for Ian. Now he doesn't really like parties, but I kept it strictly family and his family from Alberta was coming up to visit so he was going to get to see them! Turns out keeping a secret from your husband is way harder than I thought! He spent the last few days thinking I was mad at him because I kept the talking to a minimum so that I wouldn't spill and tell him. I could tell he was REALLY surprised when he opened the door and saw everyone, which made it all worth the ridiculous shopping trips, the secrets, and stress of making it perfect for him. After we ate and sang happy birthday, we headed to the gym for some volleyball and I got to spend some one on one time with Caleb! All in all, the night was a blast and we had SO much fun seeing everyone together again for Ian's birthday!

And here's the vlog for that day!!:

Our First Official Davenport Easter!!

For the first time ever, Ian and I hosted a family event! We held our first ever family Easter dinner and egg hunt and, as usual, we really didn't decide this until a week before Easter (the zombie party we did was only decided a day in advance so I guess a week was a step in the right direction). Since this was our first official Davenport event, we wanted everything to be perfect. Ok so maybe Ian didn't care as much as I did, but I'm always seeing such adorable parties on Pinterest that I wanted mine to match. We had my parents, Ian's parents and his two brothers over and my initial idea of making a pink wonderland decor wasn't going to flow with there being 5 guys and only 3 girls (one day, I will get to throw my vintage floral tea party!) so I tried really hard to tone down the pink and flowers. 

The invites for both families were vintage-y:

Since I knew I would still be cooking when they arrived, I made sure there were little snacks for everyone until dinner was ready. These are coconut macaroon nests with a chocolate mini egg in the middle:

Choco Tejas de coco are SO yummy and they kind of have the egg shape so they were a go for Easter! My favourite is the coconut but I made pecans too (my dad's favourite):

Everyone had a pre-filled basket:

 They had two big eggs (everyone had two more big eggs hidden around the house), mini Lindor chocolates, bunny marshmallows and I knitted everyone a little bunny to take home:

I saw this on pinterest for a little kid's party, but I thought watching grown ups play this game would be really funny!:

I love everything cutesy about this dinner, but I wanted to remind everyone (in a vintage way) of the main focus of Easter:

Each place setting had our Gordon Ramsay china that my godparents bought us for our wedding (gracias tios!!) and Royal Doulton silverware from Ian's grandpa (also from our wedding). The silver chargers were from Home Sense and the glasses were Ikea:

I normally don't do assign seating, but I had to try this idea out that I saw in a magazine!:

 Here's everyone!

Then Ian took one of me in the group:

 I am so used to having bread when we have a big dinner that when I forgot to buy some at the store, I had to make some from scratch (which actually turned out great!):

The asparagus was all my mom! I hate veggies and when I told my mom my menu, she said she would take care of the veggies:

 Best. Fruit Wine. Ever. :

 As much as I hate veggies, adding bacon and garlic to anything makes it yummy to me: 

 Oh boy, the ham! I didn't grow up eating ham, so I don't absolutely need it like I would turkey at Christmas. But when I was told someone had already bought a giant ham for Easter dinner, I was kinda bummed because I have no idea how to make it! (Thank you Google for the recipe that everyone loved!): 

 We also had scalloped potatoes and deviled eggs for dinner.
Then, we had to find our eggs that the Easter Bunny hid for everyone. They were all labelled with everyone's name, so it was fun watching people get excited that they found one only to see that it wasn't their egg:

Our Easter dinner was complete with an appearance from our very own Easter Bunny!:

Johnson Baby Shower

We have a new sister in the ward and she is very pregnant.  I found out that it was her first baby and I absolutely HAD to throw her a baby shower! I had three days to throw a baby shower and while most people would completely panic and throw in the towel, I turned to the best website ever created: Pinterest! I have everything on Pinterest ready to go from dinner parties to baby showers to designs for my baby's room so the tough part was already done.  All the ideas were there and I just had to make them come to life :)

Our first game was the classic clothes pin game. Everyone gets a clothes pin and you steal other people's pins through the whole party as they say the word "cute". At the end of the party, whoever has the most pins, wins!

I had everyone fill these in for a memory book for baby Johnson:

I made her cake because it was actually a lot cheaper to make than to buy anywhere else:

This was the second game: blindfolded diaper change.  I didn't have any blindfolds so I just had everyone look up at someone throughout the diaper change. We faced off against everyone and since I'm so competitive and love to win, I thought that matching me up with the new first time mama was a good idea.  I later found out she had a whole bunch of little siblings and was actually a diaper pro (she won the whole game!). I also learned that this game was A LOT harder than I thought and I learned that Ian will be doing all the diapers because I got it around the doll's leg both not looking and looking (I have never done diapers before this and you can tell by my face below)

 Kim was seriously a diper pro!

 She even beat my mom!

By the end of the night, I was so grateful for my Pinterest baby shower board that pretty much had everything already planned! It was also great that Ian spent the whole party in another room with his guitar to help with the take-down (and he tried to teach me how to change a diaper but it didn't work)