Spring on the Inside

The view from my kitchen this morning.

Well, it's a gorgeous spring day in Minnesota.  As one of my girls put it at Girls Group Monday night, "If Mother Nature was a real person, someone would have murdered her by now."  I think we are all sort of feeling that way.  But, I guess if we can't have spring outside, then the next best thing is spring on the inside--and it was definitely spring at our fundraiser for the Soul Sisterhood Retreat this weekend!

We had a sunny, although chilly, day for our fundraiser, but it was warm and fun inside.  We had a silent auction, bake sale, raffle, dessert buffet and a great speaker, Jessica Zuehlke.  Sixty-four people attended, and $2500 was raised to support our summer camp for girls.  It was wonderful.  Here's some of the highlights:

Our dessert buffet included cheesecake, peach cobbler, angel food cupcakes, Oreo truffles, lemon bars, raspberry bars, Oreo cupcakes, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough cupcakes, brownie pops, Raspberry Truffle cups, and yogurt parfaits. Oh, and Chocolate covered strawberries.  There were probably other things as well, but I can't remember all of it.

We decorated the tables with vintage linens (from my personal collection), gorgeous clusters of daffodils, and we also gave each of the women who came a merit badge as a token of thanks for their support for the Soul Sisterhood Retreat.

The bake sale was not huge, but featured yummy goodies like banana bread and muffins, red velvet cheesecake brownies, lemon drop cookies, pumpkin bread, lemon poppyseed bread,  Raspberry bars and Oreo cupcakes.  (Some of the women brought home treats for their deserving husbands and children!)

These are some of the silent auction prizes.  The quilt on the left is the one that I made for the event.  It received many oooh's and ahhhh's.  We also had homemade soaps, jewelry, a garden basket and other great prizes.  Everyone was so generous with their talents!

These were a sampling of the raffle prizes too.  We had cookbooks, gift certificates and some more jewelry.

This was our speaker, Jessica Zuehlke, who along with her husband wrote the musical The Church Basement Ladies.  She was so funny, personable, and encouraging.  She talked about her creative process and her writing, and how she creates the characters and the settings and action in her work.  She really encouraged people to just try writing.  One of my middle school girls (who is a writer and actress) even wanted to follow up with Jessica for advice.

All in all it was a wonderful afternoon and everyone had a great time.  I have to admit though...I really don't want to spend any time in the kitchen right now. 

A Demonstration of Creative Prowess

Sorry, it's been a while.  I've been super distracted lately by too many fun things all at once.  It's a good problem to have, but the bad part is that I forget my camera a lot, so I can't share those fun things with you.  Anyway.

On Monday night I offered my girls group a Cake-boss style challenge.  Only they had to use play-doh.  It was a super fun, colorful, night with lots of creative, inedible goodies.  Here are some of the highlights:

These were the goodies that I made:  A chocolate covered strawberry, two truffles, and a frosted cookie.  They almost look good enough to eat!

One of the girls made a movie snacks themed cake.  These were the beginnings of the pieces she used to decorate it.  It had soda, popcorn, pretzels, cookies, dots, and so much more on it.  When we had our "show and tell" at the end of the night, it was clear who the cake boss was.  There was an audible gasp at the intricacy of her play-doh cake.

A towering creation...we used the play-doh cake maker kit (in Target's toy department) and it had tons of fun features like cookie cutters, a cupcake base mold, little molds for roses, stars, and other things you'd use a specialty frosting tip for.  It even had a little squirting frosting bag!  It was awesome.

This is many of the girls hard at work on their "cakes."  We had a really good time being 5 again.  It really made me want to get out a coloring book and crayons too!