Is it just our area that has a lot of babies being born or is it everywhere?  We personally know quite a few who have had babies within the past few months.  In fact, one of my teacher’s aides came to school one day recently, went to the hospital instead of going home after work, and had her baby in the wee hours the following morning.  There must be a lot of baby shower invitations being sent with all those babies being born.  Plus I know several who are still pregnant.  Maybe we’re having a baby boom!

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I was taught the importance of written thank you cards by my mother.  She always had me write thank you cards to my grandparents and relatives for Christmas and birthday gifts, starting when I was old enough to write.  When I graduated from high school, again I wrote a thank you card for every single gift I received.  So when my husband and I got married, I automatically wrote thank you cards for all the gifts we received.  Back then, etiquette was such that the thank you card should be received within two weeks after the gift was given.  With each pregnancy, I looked for cute baby thank you cards to send for all the shower gifts and gifts received after each baby was born.  It didn’t matter if my hand was aching or I was tired from all the writing.  If a person was gracious enough to give a gift, then they should receive a thank you!

Nowadays, some people do not send out thank you cards.  I believe that thank you cards should always be sent for wedding and baby gifts. If the gift came through the mail, a card should be sent within two weeks.  That is just common courtesy to let the person know that their gift arrived safely and was appreciated!    In my opinion, all thank you cards should be received within a month after the gift was given.

By the way, our children learned the importance of written thank you notes, too.  Our daughter wrote thank you cards for graduation, wedding, and baby gifts.  Our son wrote cards for his graduation presents.  I even had some people tell me how much they appreciated our children’s thank you cards because a lot of times they didn’t receive cards for gifts given.  I hope this beautiful form of etiquette in showing appreciation never goes out of style.

My mother-in-law’s favorite sugar cookie recipe is a special family recipe!  She’s been making these cookies for years and got the recipe from another relative.  My m-i-l needs to gain weight so I suggested we make these cookies while we were there visiting this summer.  I don’t know if she gained any weight….but I definitely did!!  Oh well, now I remember why I rarely bake cookies.

These cookies are soft and yet delicately crisp at the same time.  They’re rich tasting and melt in your mouth.  They should be rich tasting considering they have one cup of oil and one cup of butter (the Pioneer Woman would like all the butter in these!)  In my opinion, I think these cookies would be great to serve at a wedding or baby shower, especially if rolled in colored sugar to match the colors of the shower.  They’re definitely not healthy so really these should be just special occasion cookies.  Here’s the recipe:

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup sugar (plus extra sugar to roll the cookies in)
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup canola oil
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• 4 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• Colored sugar for special occasions
  

DIRECTIONS:

Combine the sugars, butter, oil and salt.  Beat well with mixer.  Add eggs.  Add dry ingredients.  Chill dough.  Make into balls, roll in sugar, and place on ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake at 350 degrees for 8 minutes.

Here are the cookies we made at my mother-in-law’s house.  Wish I could take one off the plate right now!

During the past three years, I have received several baby shower invitations when our daughter was expecting their two babies.   I attended two of her showers for our first grandson and one shower for the second one.  It was almost as much fun at those showers as it was when I was expecting our babies years ago.  My favorite shower was the one over two and a half years ago here in our hometown where our daughter and son-in-law grew up.  We had so much fun looking at all the many cute baby things and trying to imagine what it would be like to have a little baby in the family.  Time sure does fly!  Baby J is no longer a baby but a two and a half year old, and Baby C has taken his place as “baby.”

CardsShoppe.com has creative invitations to personalize baby showers.  They have cute invitations for showers given before the baby arrives as well as ones for after the baby is here.

The style of the invitations set the tone for a baby shower.  If I get a cute invitation, then the shower is usually just as creative as the invitation.

If you are planning a baby shower, then check out their site and see which invitation you like best.  Be sure to order extra invitations in case there are people added to the invitation list at the last minute.

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This is the diaper cake from one of our daughter’s baby showers.  I asked for directions on how to make it, and so here they are:

Start by rolling each diaper tightly and place a rubber band around it to secure it.  Place diapers next to each other to make a circular shape.  Place a PCV pipe (from a craft store) in the middle of the cake for stability of the layers.  Surround each layer of cake with a large rubber band (also from craft store) and then place ribbon over the rubber band using the favorite colors of the mother-to-be or the nursery colors.  Decorate with baby shapes bought at any craft store (or Dollar Tree).  You can make two layers or more.  This particular cake had three layers.

These individual cheesecakes would be nice to serve at a wedding shower if you wanted something different from traditional cake. They are simple to make with the following ingredients:

• 1 pkg. Nestle Toll House Refrigerated Chocolate Chip Cookie Bar Dough
  
• 2 8-oz pkgs. cream cheese at room temperature
• 1 can Nestle Carnation Sweetened Condensed Milk
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 21-oz can of cherry pie filling (optional)

PREHEAT oven to 325 degrees.

LINE 24 muffin cups with paper liners and place one piece of cookie dough in each muffin cup.

BAKE for 10-12 minutes until cookie has spread to edge of cup.

BEAT cream cheese, canned milk, eggs, and vanilla until smooth.

POUR about 3 tablespoons cream cheese mixture over each cookie in the muffin cups. BAKE an additional 15-18 minutes until the cheese mixture is set. Cool completely. REFRIGERATE for at least one hour. Remove paper liners before serving.

TOP with a teaspoonful of cherries. (Or if red cherries do not go with your color scheme, then you could top with fresh fruit to color coordinate such as kiwi for green, blueberries for blue, etc., or for something neutral you could use shaved chocolate. That’s just my idea.)