A Simple Gender Reveal Party

     Way back in April, my brother and sister-in-law threw a cute Gender Reveal Party to tell the family whether they would be having a boy or a girl. Spoiler alert, they had a boy and he is darling! I was really impressed with how simple yet clever and affordable all of their party ideas were. 

     They started by having everyone play a fun guessing game. The votes were pretty evenly split. 

The party decorations were very simple and incorporated many items that can be found from around the house. Mason jars were given a quick coat of pink or blue acrylic paint to become flower vases. A punch bowl was also turned into festive decor with a simple strawberry-blueberry lemonade. Edible cake decorating pearls were used to make the Muddy Buddy dessert fit the theme.  Other decorations included simple plastic table cloths, streamers, and banners.

  

They ended the party by having us pop some confetti filled balloons. The first set of twelve balloons were filled with white confetti, unbeknownst to everyone but them. Anyone that wanted to could take a turn throwing a dart to pop a balloon and it provided for a good fifteen minutes of entertainment. Actually more because there were some technical issues with video chatting with various family members so that they could watch the festivities. After all of the balloons were popped they pulled out one more balloon filled with blue confetti. I'm not sure how it was marked differently so that they knew which was which, but somehow the people at the party store that filled up the balloons made sure things were labeled. 

I thought that it would be fun to capture their reaction to the news, so here's a fun little video that I made of the Gender Reveal Balloon Game. 

Snack Time: Easy and Cheap Pudding Pops

I suppose I can't say that these pudding pops are easier to make than Otter Pops, because you actually have to follow a few more steps than just placing them in the freezer. You have to mix the pudding, put it into the popsicle mold, and then wash the popsicle mold when the pudding pops are gone. Not a ton of effort and I like to think that they have a little more nutritional value in them because of the milk used to make the pudding.

Here is what you will need:

1 box of instant pudding, any flavor. I used the 5.25 oz package because it makes eight and I have eight spots in my popsicle mold. 

Milk (see package for amount)

I am sure I'm not the first person to think of these, but they've been a huge hit at our house for the past several weeks that I have to document this in case I forget and try to complicate things again.

I used to go through more effort in actually following a recipe, some of my favorites came from the Our Best Bites blog. The pudding pops from these recipes are delicious but call for extra ingredients such as half-and-half, which I don't always have on hand. After trying these a few times with the kids liking these just as much or better, for their snack time I will be sticking with these. Of course when I feel like a pudding pop, I will probably choose the fancier versions. 

So far their favorite flavors have been pistachio and vanilla. They said that the chocolate pudding pops were just ok.