knee deep in the baby pool: Moo Moo, Party Review {the food}

Whew, almost done folks. The food for Owen and Ellie's was probably the easiest thing to plan, but the biggest pain to execute. Let me explain. I knew I wanted to keep things pretty simple with the food. One of the main reasons I did a 3pm party was that it was after nap time, but before the dinner hour so I didn't feel like I needed to feed people a full meal.

Let's start with the drink table outside. I used the sign "wet your whistle" for the main signage and then labeled each drink bin as "well water" and "adult beverages." I had sweet tea as well. I had bought different syrups to have a milk bar as well, but as time got really short toward the end, I didn't put it out. Plus it was warm enough that I didn't want to think about how to keep the milk cool and still look cute.

Yes, I made all the water bottle labels. I designed them in photoshop and printed them on card stock. I then put contact paper over them to try to help them last water in their ice bath. I just love little details like this.

I found adorable thick cardboard straws on pick your plum in one of their daily deals.

Now let's move indoors. Here was a list of my menu with their cute "farm names" which I just found in various places on the web.

utensils wrapped in cow napkin and twine

no bake cookies - recipe here

chocolate covered Oreos that my MIL brought

fruit trays - thanks Mom!

veggies and dip

good 'ol Rice Krispie Treats

Now on to the cake table. My favorite part. But it was a paint to get this all ready the day before. I priced having someone else doing the cupcakes, but I couldn't justify being able to buy all the box mixes I would need for the price of a few cupcakes. So I decided to do them all myself. This definitely added stress to everything else that had to get done last minute. But they turned out great. Thanks to Jenna for icing them all. :)

I kept it simple by just doing vanilla and chocolate, but both with vanilla icing.

And then there was the cake. I'm so proud of this guy. I made the cute flag bunting and attached it to kabob sticks with pointy ends so it would slide in easily.

I used a white boxed cake mix and divided it into two small round cake pans. I followed the directions on the pans and greased them with real shortening which helped them come out of the pans great. I dropped spoonfuls of chocolate cake batter in white to make it look like cow spots when it was cut open. Then I put one of top of the other with a little icing. I did a crumb coat on the whole thing and put it in the fridge overnight. (I loosely followed these directions on how to ice the cake since I've never done a "fancy" cake before). The morning of the party I did a icing layer all over and got it as smooth as I could and did a cute scallop around the bottom.

To make the cow spots, I found these awesome sugar sheets at Walmart. They come in tons of colors, are edible, and you can literally just cut them with a pair of scissors. So I just cut out cow spots and laid them all around the cake.