My best friend’s bridal shower is this weekend and I’m so looking forward to celebrating with her! In addition to ‘saying yes to the dress’ and receiving your first RSVP to the wedding, this is another milestone that makes the whole experience begin to feel “really real”. If you’ve been a bride, you understand that phrase! The bridal shower is a wonderful event where you get to share the excitement with your closest family and girlfriends and begin collecting the simple essentials for your home that will quickly become items you treasure. Some will be items you hold on to forever simply because they were part of the start to your happily ever after. Wedding gifts are very special; my Grandma has handed down a couple serving bowls from her wedding (over 50 years ago) and they are easily my favorite dishes in the house! Of course, I don’t use them often in fear of breaking them 🙂

For my gift to the beautiful bride, I decided to do a kitchen theme with the primary color being red. She has always been a fan of red and has talked about red accents in her kitchen since we were in high school.

I’m not very good at sticking to the registry when it comes to gifts, but I did manage to purchase one measuring cup from her registry! Luckily, we both share a love for creativity over registry shopping. Reason 4,321 we’re best friends. The rest of the kitchen goodies came from my favorite store in town, Crate and Barrel, and the cute wire basket was a steal from Michael’s Craft Store ringing in at $10! If you’re looking for a cute cookbook for newlyweds, I highly recommend the one pictured below. It’s a heavy, thick book filled with an array recipes in fun categories like ‘Supper’, ‘Date Night’ and ‘Embellishments’ (snacks, sauces and sips to enlighten the table). I wouldn’t mind having this cookbook in our kitchen as well, but buying it for myself as my husband and I embark on our third year of marriage takes a bit of the fun out of it. Perhaps they’ll come out with a sequel for ‘old married couples’ filled with recipes titled ‘I don’t know’ and ‘nothing in particular’ as these are the typical responses from the Mr. when asking “what sounds good for dinner?” These answers are no help to what sometimes feels like the toughest decision of the day. Yes, you may insert the catch phrase ‘first world problems’ here 🙂

In addition to the cookbook, I have to call out one more small item from the gift…the white silicon jar spatula you see in the measuring cup! It’s easily one of my best kitchen purchases and well worth the $3.95 it will cost you! It’s the best spatula I’ve owned and is certainly not limited to use in jars; I’ve used it for cooking and baking, with hot and cold foods. Not only does it exceed my expectations with function, it keeps its color after several uses and there’s no worry of pieces of material falling off into your food! The things you brag about as you get older, right? 🙂

Now that the gift is ready to go my final task is writing a recipe for the future Mr. & Mrs. Each guest was sent a recipe card with the invitation and asked to bring it to the shower with a recipe written on it. We did the same for my bridal shower and I really enjoyed reading through all of them afterwards. I received some fantastic recipes that are still referenced in our kitchen today, but my favorite one was from my sweet step daughter who provided me with the steps to make a classic PB&J! It was the best and this is certainly one of my most cherished recipes!

If you’re in a similar spot and also looking to put together a bridal shower, wedding or housewarming gift, I hope this gave you a few fun ideas! For all you brides – enjoy your bridal shower, soak up everything you can from the event, be sure to send thank you notes to everyone and thank your maid of honor and bridesmaids three times 🙂

Her countdown continues…36 days!!

 

As always, thanks for reading!!