I had to wear a Zena bow headband.

But it was for my bridal shower, and it was all in good fun.

Mike, me and my awesome and beautiful bridesmaids (L-R), Ami, Deb, Sheila, and Janice

Thanks to my maids and my moms, I had the most wonderful bridal shower. Most of all, thanks to my maid of honor, Deb, and my soon-to-be mother-in-law, Linda, for planning everything! Everything was perfect. Especially the cake. It was amazing. I still dream about it ... yes, it really was that good.

Thanks also to everyone who came and for all the fantastic gifts!! If it wasn't obvious from my registry, I love cooking tools and being around the bevy of brand new tools and appliances made me feel like a kid in a candy candy story. Better yet, I get to have all the candy, and I have you all to thank for that.

One of the gifts that got me the most excited was the KitchenAid mixer that I received from my parents. We also got an ice cream maker attachment so I wanted to make something with ice cream. I decided on ice cream sandwiches!!

The cookies are a chocolate sugar cookie, whose recipe I got from www.smittenkitchen.com (great, great food blog, by the way). It was pretty much a sugar cookie recipe with cocoa powder thrown in. I then rolled out the dough and cut out flower shapes. The ice cream recipe is also from smitthenkitchen, but it was basically whole milk, heavy cream, a little bit of vanilla, salt, and a jar of caramel ice cream topping mixed together (I then added chopped pecans later while it was mixing). I let the mixture chill for about an hour. This was not enough time! And so my first attempt at making ice cream was a big fail - the stuff never thickened. I poured everything out of the frozen container and put in the fridge overnight. The next morning, I tried again and got success! The ice cream attachment makes soft ice cream, though; it has to harden in the freezer another few hours to get hard ice cream.

Here are some shots of the mixer in action ... just because I like them.