Manic Mama Miles: What Will It Bee?

So you've heard about the "What Will it Bee?" party & seen the Bee Diaper Cake...but what did we snack on at this party? Well, since I am OCD, mostly only things that were yellow & black or things that could sound like a bee buzzing (think Meatballzzz, I told you I was incredibly corny).

Here is a shot of the entire table. My friend Ally, who you will hear more about when we talk about the cake, found the bee fabric that we used as a table runner & the damask tablecloth online. They were perfect. Remember on the main "What Will It Bee?" party post when I talked about using the address labels & favor tags for other things? This is what I was talking about. I love ribbon & I love using two different ribbons to decorate things, so I took different ribbons to mix & match them & put a favor tag in the middle to decorate all of the food dishes. The great thing about using so many different patterns of ribbon is that you can keep them all after the party is over & just mix & match them differently for your next theme. I also took the leftover yellow & black cardstock from the banners I made & cut them into small little placecards to label the food. I used the cute bee address labels to write what the food was. Here, you can see our "Licorice Twizzzlers" & our "Rock Candy Stickzzz". I know, I'm ridiculous.

In addition to candy, we also had real food. We had "Bar-Bee-Cue Meatballzzz", "Bar-Bee-Cue Wingzzz", "Teriyaki Wingzzz", "Honey Peanut Butter Rollzzz" & "Ham & Cheese Rollzzz". We also had a chips with a "Balsamic Black Bean & Corn Salzzza", my Bee Cheeseball & Ally's amazing bee cake.

I make these meatballs all the time & have even started making a meatloaf pretty much the exact same way. I saw a recipe for Ham Balls out of a Better Home & Garden cookbook or something & decided that sausage would be way more delicious, so I revamped it. Click here for the meatballs recipe.

The salsa was so good & was so simple to make. You can find the recipe on All Recipes (here). All it took to make it was 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar, 2 tablespoons vegetable oil, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon white sugar, 1/2 teaspoon ground pepper, 1/2 teaspoon cumin, 1/2 teaspoon chili powder, 2 tablespoons of cilantro (fresh is best, but go with what you got), 1 (15 ounce) can of black beans rinsed & drained, & 1 (8.75 ounce) can of sweet corn drained. Toss it all together & let refrigerate overnight & it will be so good the next day.

I wish I could tell you how to make this amazing cake listed below, but that is all my friend Ally. She & I went to law school together & have many times considered ditching this whole law career thing & only doing parties. How amazing would she be at just making cakes? She makes her cakes with a buttercream icing base & then covers it & details it with fondant. Her cakes are always so impressive. Her handwriting is also phenomenal, so she did the chocolate covered strawberries with the little "W"s on them too.

Here is my bee cheeseball. Kind of a disappointment after that awesome cake, huh? : ) I have been making cheeseballs forever. I love them & am constantly looking for a different way to do them. I have made them look like turkeys, pumpkins, owls, footballs, a superman shield, etc. But, I had never made a bee. The recipe for my usual cheeseball can be found here. In making these cheeseballs into the different things that I mentioned above, there are just small things to tweak & add. This bee one I did a little differently because I doubled the recipe since I knew I wanted the bee to be bigger. I also did not cover the ball in chili powder like I normally do, but mixed in about 4 tablespoons of it into the actual cheeseball mix since I wanted to keep it a yellow color. Oh, I almost forgot, I got the yellow color by adding in a little yellow food coloring that I had leftover from the Duck Cupcakes (here). I was concerned that it might be as bright as the cupcakes & I didn't want that, but with all of the spices that I was using too, it turned out a pretty great color. Once I had all of my ingredients mixed together, I made one large bee body & a smaller bee head. I used two long toothpicks & put black olives on them to make the antennas & cut other olives in half to make the stripes. I also took two slices of a black olive to make the eyes. The whites of the eyes are just plain cream cheese circles. The wings are also crafted out of cream cheese. Of all of my cheeseballs I have made, I have to say that this is one of my favorites.