BabyEarth was one of the places the mom-to-be was registered and they were kind enough to let us use a room off to the side of their store. We decided to play off of the bright green wall. Here’s the overall shot:

These pom poms seem to be all the rage right now – I keep seeing them in different party scenarios. Instead of spending exorbitant money for the premade versions, we bought some tissue paper in corresponding colors and made them ourselves! Martha had an easy to follow tutorial. We also used a cricut to cut out tons of those little dots and I sewed them together. Looks a bit like rain clouds and rain drops – a literal shower! We also folded some paper airplanes out of vintage atlas paper and strung those through the pom poms and dots.

Here’s an overall view of the food tables. Don’t you love those vintage suitcases? One of the hostesses just happened to have them.

Also made on the cricut – this sweet ‘up up & away’ banner! I believe it is going in the nursery now. So cute!

Since the shower started right after lunch, we just had some light snacks. Parmesan popcorn and kettle corn in these cute little paper tubes. . .

Happy skewers of fruit. . .

Cake pops (do you see the awesome airplane cake pop? amazing) . . . honey roasted and regular peanuts (remember back in the day when they used to served honey roasted peanuts on planes?) . . .

Some cucumber water and cherry limeade (made with real cherries – more on those later). . . And let me tell you, I am officially obsessed with mason jars and these straws. They have been showing up all over the blog world and I just adore them!

And of course, we had to have some cake! We bought a simple cake from costco and just added the paper airplane garland right before the shower.

And if you know me – you know I’m not much for games at showers – especially ones that involve candy bars and disposable diapers. So we played a simple game of guess the celebrity baby photo. It was quick and I think everyone had fun with it!

We are so excited for the mom-to-be and really loved throwing her this sweet airplane shower!

We decided to take it easy and stay home for New Years only because we had been running around Dallas for over a week straight and we were tired. Staying in, drinking champagne and stuffing ourselves silly at home sounded nice. And of course that meant I finally got to spend some time in my own kitchen cooking to my heart’s content.

Deb did it again: she posted this recipe for spicy caramel popcorn and I already had all of the ingredients on hand to make it. I’ve never made caramel corn before so I thought I’d give it a go. I’m intrigued with uncommon flavor combos like salty sweet, sweet spicy, or in this case, salty sweet spicy.

Let me start out by saying that it is a lot of fun to pop popcorn on the stove in a lidded pot. I’d never done it before (only in a brown paper bag in the microwave and of course the prepackaged weird buttery stuff that we all grew up on). I will definitely be doing it again. I mean, really, I’ll be making this whole recipe again. I love how quickly it comes together and how impressive it seems. I’m finding that I really enjoy making caramels and this one is no different, although it’s fun to add the baking soda mixture to the caramel at the end because it bubbles up like a science experiment. Yes. I was the child that used to steal my mom’s baking soda to mix with vinegar so I could watch it bubble and make a mess all over the kitchen.

OK. Anyways. This is a great recipe. The outcome is really impressive and a perfect gift item. The unexpected spice comes at the end of the bite and is lovely (I used 1/2 tsp of cayenne). Make some! Pass it out to your neighbors!

Recipe for Spicy Caramel Popcorn