My First Hostess Experience in Photos: Shower Menu, 7 New Recipes and GOOD TIMES!

So... I had an amazing weekend!! I will do a separate post catching up on everything (eats, finished a book, tons of home projects done, etc.) but I wanted to devote this post to Saturday evening - the baby shower I hosted for Jimmy & Mary. It was SO much fun having so many of our closest friends in town to celebrate and just hang out. I personally think they're all hilarious and so to have them all in one place was awesome!! Three couples stayed over too so it was like a big spend the night party! Most importantly, I think Mary and Jimmy had a great time, the game I made up seemed to go over well, they got lots of beautiful gifts and it was just GREAT!!

As far as food, I wanted to do a mediterranean/Greek theme for a few reasons. 1) I've been loving the food lately! 2) It's pretty. It's just so colorful! 3) Mary and Jimmy are Greek! Perfection! So I began scouring my favorite food bloggy sites and put together the menu below. I was so nervous and so excited. Were they going to work out? Would they look good? Would it taste good? eek!! I made everything Thursday night, but about an hour before the shower I put items together and set it all up. Here goes! And a special thank you to For the Love of Cooking, Recipegirl and Cooking Light...

Shower Menu

Greek Appetizer Skewers from Recipegirl.com

Greek Salad Bites from Recipegirl.com

Marinated Mushrooms from Recipegirl.com

Penne with Chicken Sausage AND Pasta Salad in Vinaigrette from For the Love of Cooking

Herbed Greek Chicken Salad Pitas from Cookinglight.com

Tomato & Fresh Basil Crostini with feta and roasted garlic cheese spread from For the Love of Cooking

Pitas + Hummus from Trader Joe’s (1 bag of mini pitas and 4 flavors of hummus)

Baklava + Chocolate cover Pretzels from Trader Joe’s

Please note: We LOVED every recipe. Seriously! The recipes are posted below - AMAZING - I was so happy with it. ALSO, we had A LOT more food than shown above - I restocked the pasta bowls at least 2 more times, same with the greek Salad bites, skewers, etc.

The Spread

The Good Times

The boys... always a good time

Our best friends on our porch! i'm a cheeseball...

Reuben had friends in town, too - Teresa & Forrest's Cassie

It took a long time to get this group shot!

See what I mean?

Jimmy being Jimmy hehe

And Ryan being Ryan.

A "candid" hehe

The boys!! With their cigars of course.

The Girls (the hand on hip bookends were not planned!)

Me and Austin - not our best photo but what are you going to do?!

Teresa and Daisy!

Mary and Jimmy were SO cute opening gifts and playing the game I made them play. hehe

The Velotas's and their prezzies

Mary and Mary - reunited and it feels so good!

The boys being forced to be in more pics!

Cassie girl ran security all night SO cute!

Last but not least - part of our beverage center - WOWZA we went through so much beer, wine and vodka!!

THE END!!

Tomorrow I will post:

• A book review (finished Undomestic Goddess!)
• Thursday, Friday and Saturday's workouts (I even ran you guys!)
• My eats
• A bit more about my weekend - the house seems so empty now!! :(

This week I will post:

• More house pics (a lot of our projects are DONE!!)

I hope you all had wonderful weekends!! I'm going to catch up on your blogs.... NOW!!!! Yay! I missed blog world!