A Baptism Party

On Sunday we baptized our 12 day old baby Grace. There is always a dilemma when it comes to this event. On one hand, I have a newborn and I'm are exhausted. On the other hand this is one of the most significant events in my child's life. So, do I have a party or not? I always start by thinking we'll keep it simple and only invite a few people, but that is never where I end up. Therefor on Sunday we hosted brunch for 60 of our closest friends after the baptism mass. When you work at FOCUS' HQ almost everyone you know is Catholic and many of those friends have big families, so getting to 60 attendees is really easy. I wish we could have invited more!

Here is what I did to cater to my own likes (aka, things that won't stress me out too much) and to make it manageable. And I must mention that I had both my mom and mother-in-law in town, so they were a huge help!

Decorations:

Decorations are the part I actually enjoy about entertaining, so I tend to go a little overboard. I adore personalized printouts, so I purchased and printed cupcake toppers, a banner and water bottle labels from Little Apples Design on Etsy. To personalize that banner you'll need to purchase this as well. They all turned out so cute!

Pink ribbon was used on my new cake stands. I really like these stands because you can coordinate them for every occasion by easily switching out the ribbon color. I spent months looking for them in every possible location around town, but in the end my mom bought them online and surprised me with them for my birthday, such a great 30th birthday gift!

I quickly threw together a slideshow, put it on a jump drive, and we had that running on a digital photo frame throughout the day. It was great addition that only took 10 minutes.

Finally, I bought these accordion lanterns from Michael's with a 50% off coupon. Super easy and only $7.50! I will definitely use them again for her 1st birthday party!

Food:

For the food I didn't cook or bake anything. I went to Costco. It was awesome.

Yes it would have been more awesome to have a ton of home baked goods, but nobody would have liked me by the end of the party if I had done that.

And I did look like a hero until my secret was revealed. "No, I didn't make the mini tiramisu, but thanks for thinking I'm superwoman."

I (and my mom, mother-in-law, father-in-law, and daughter) DID however make parfaits. These were the best! We layered defrosted frozen berries and vanilla yogurt in wine cups and then right before serving added granola on top. This made me feel better about serving a ton of carbs. We also served mini quiche for some protein, but by the time they were done baking I was busy socializing, so I didn't get any pictures of them.

At the end of the day I was tired, but happy. (I stole that closer from Bean's latest composition for writing class.)

Be saints, it's worth it!
Lisa