Headless Chicken, Anyone?

So tomorrow is the big Baby Shower day. I had done all I could do remotely, so today I loaded up the offspring and drove to Ginormousville to gather up the rest. Thank god for my mom-in-law. She corralled the kids and shooed me off on the hunt. I left the house around 3:00 and thought I would be back in time for dinner. I walked in at - wait for it... 11:30.

My list of errands were pretty standard: paper plates, cups, napkins and plastic cutlery; booze for the sangria*; fruit for the sangria and iced tea; and the stuff to make the diaper cake centerpiece. I figured I would hit the craft store, liquor store, baby store and grocery store and be done. Silly me! You see, my problem is that I have these very specific ideas of how I want thing to turn out, so if the stores don't have exactly what I want, I have to add another store to my list to check for it there.

The craft store was disappointing. They had literally no party plates and depressingly few baby accessories that weren't either overly pink or downright tacky. They redeemed themselves slightly by having cute ribbon for the diaper cake, but I still had to add another craft store to my list.

Next I had to drive all the way to the outer suburbs to pick up a hard to find book, then back into town to the baby store. They had diapers and goodies for the diaper cake, but no party supplies. From there, I headed over to the mother ship: Target.

Target has historically had really cute paper goods, but apparently I was at the crappiest Target ever. They had only a few baby shower designs and only one that didn't make me gag outright. The rub here is that Chica loves a pretty cocktail napkin and all of these were ho-hum at best. Finally, I took the best of what they had to offer and headed on to the next destination.

The liquor store was the only stop of the day that was straight forward. Other than the clerk that laughed at me for mispronouncing Cointreau, that part was painless. Then off to another craft store and then another in pursuit of the perfect paper plate. Finally, I crossed town (again) to go to a party store and was able to find cutlery and napkins in an appropriate color.

By now it was 7:30. I called the awesome mom-in-law and she had to kids fed and on the way to the tub. I considered running back to the house to help, but they would have already been in bed by the time I could get there. So I grabbed some dinner (oh, Chipotle, how I adore thee! Diet fail.) and was able to meet up with a friend for coffee. We chatted until Starbuck's kicked us out, only to realize that I still needed fruit and tea from the grocery store.

When I got to the store, citrus was strangely scarce. They had lemons, but no oranges or peaches. I finally found some pitiful pre-bagged Texas oranges and compromised with frozen peaches. The tea, instant I'll admit, was similarly hard to find. Usually, I make the tea with two parts peach ice tea and one part lemon ice tea. No lemon tea. Sigh. Finally I dragged myself home. Whew!

So all I have left to do is to make the sangria and the tea and create an entire diaper cake. Piece of cake!

*Totally Awesome White Zin Sangria

1 750 ml bottle White Zin
1/2 cup peach schnappes
2 tablespoons tripplesec
1 lemon - thinly sliced
1 orange - thinly sliced
1 peach - sliced
10 oz. Club Soda

Mix alcohol and fruit in a large container. Chill for at least half an hour. Add soda just before serving. Serve over frozen peaches instead of ice so that the sangria wouldn't get watered down.