Bridal Shower Fun

Friday I went to a Bridal Shower for my cousin; we'll call her Cousin Italy (Italy is one of her passions; she's been there several times, just for fun, and her entire condo is Italian themed).

I usually enjoy these things, but this time I just didn't want to go. For every other bridal shower we all work together and tie a quilt during the party but this time my Aunt Peacemaker thought it would be fun if we painted dish towels instead so she just did the quilt. I really missed the quilt, this was the first bridal shower I can remember that we didn't tie a quilt. When I was little, I'd help Mum by sitting under the quilt, pulling the needle down, and pushing it back up to her and when I was about 9 Aunt Peacemaker taught me how to do it myself.

Mum was over the dish towel thing so I was nominated to stitch a decorative border around all of them. However, I didn't know this till 2 days before the event. The dish towels were on the large side and each one took 30-45 minutes (and that's with the machine going full throttle)!! My (ok, it's really Mum's sewing machine, but I call it mine) machine was also having tantrums and I ended up fighting with it and lost quite a few rounds.* I managed to finish in time but was sewing right up to the last minute before we had to leave to go to said event. Mum ironed on some vintage days-of-the-week designs (you know, each one had a different day on it with some flowers or something) and at the party we were supposed to color them. Mum tried to get some sort of special paint pens but was unsuccessful so we used Sharpies instead. The upside of this is Mum bought the hugest Sharpie pack I have ever seen and now we have ever color of Sharpie ever made, in regular and fine tip (yay!! I love Sharpies!!)! It also came with some 'clicky' Sharpies (like click pens but it's a Sharpie) and some metallic silver ones.

At the actual party I worked on my shawl, avoided coloring dish towels (I had already spent enough quality time with them while sewing the borders), and helped the groom-to-be figure out his new digital camera. Yes, at the bridal showers Mum's family throws, we invite the groom too. It wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be; I was able to actually eat some of the refreshments, wasn't too intensely grilled by other family members, and being a bit of a technology geek I very much enjoyed figuring out groom-to-be's camera (sorry I don't yet know him well enough to give him a blog name).

Something else we always do is play "The Cookie Game". Mum and I get to think up a bunch of random questions (we usually aim for 50-60) to ask the groom-to-be. We call him up ahead of time and ask said questions; then at the party we ask the bride-to-be the same questions and see if she can guess what the groom answered. If she gets it right, she gets a cookie to put in her new cookie jar; if she gets it wrong, the person who asked the question get to keep the cookie (we individually wrap each cookie and attach a question to each one, everybody at the shower asks a few).

Just because I feel like it, here's a sample of our favorite questions with my answers:

• When dressing, do you put on your pants or shirt first?: Pants
• When licking an envelope, do you lick from left to right, right to left, or another way?: I usually ask someone else to do it for me or use a sponge (gluten hides in envelope glue, it would make me ill to lick it myself)
• If you were an animal, what kind would you be?:** A cat of somekind
• When brushing your teeth, where do you start?: Back teeth, usually the right side
• Does the end of the toilet paper go over or under the roll?: I really don't care, but I usually put it under; if I don't, my cat likes to unroll the whole thing
• What color should socks be?: Argyle!!
• Concerning pens, what color ink do you prefer? Blue, black, or another color?: I like red, or green, or maybe purple. I guess I just like pens that aren't a "normal" color.
• When taking off your shoes, do you untie them first or just pull them off?: Just pull them off
• Do you prefer butter or margarine?: Unsalted butter please
• If you won the lottery, what is the first thing you would do with your winnings?: Finish paying for my violin and pamper it (it needs new varnish, a good cleaning, new strings, a check up, and I want to get the finger board/pegs replaced. They don't need replacing but it'd be cool of they matched my chin rest)
• How many 1st cousins do you have?:*** 53 (no I'm not kidding, I counted)
• How many Aunts and Uncles do you have?:*** 26 (this includes spouses of the "original" Aunts and Uncles)
• What kind of chocolate do you prefer? Dark, milk, or white?: Dark, around 70% is perfect
• When relaxing at home, what do you have on your feet? Socks, slippers, nothing, something else?: Usually nothing; unless I was wearing shoes earlier that day, then I wear socks (I always take off my shoes but sometimes I'm too lazy to take the socks off too)

*When I won, I was able to go on sewing. When the machine won, I'd have to either stop and re-thread it or stop and unpick a few inches of stitching.
**The actual question we ask is 'If you and [insert brides name here] were both animals, what would you be?
***We also ask 'How many 1st cousins/Aunts and Uncles do you think [insert brides name here] has? Also, please keep in mind that these numbers include both sides of the family.