baby shower

Fall Baby Shower

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Another baby shower that I helped with last fall was a fall themed shower.  I used my Cricut a lot this time with the Flower Shoppe cartridge (one of my favorites) and made little flowers to set around in our fall-ish color scheme:  plum, bronze, teal, brown, lite pink, and cream.  We just did a few simple printed games for this shower and again I didn’t have to do food (in case you didn’t notice, it is my least favorite part of party planning).
Sarah's shower3RThe invitation.

WP_20130927_002Paper flower wreath for the front door.

WP_20130928_002Banner made with light and dark brown burlap strips and a variety of different ribbons and lace throughout.

DSCN2518Centerpiece (mini hay bales, flowers, acorns and leaf cutouts)

DSCN2517  The food made by my friend was totally amazing and gourmet!  YUM!

DSCN2519 DSCN2520 DSCN2521 DSCN2524 I had 2 party favors for the guest (mostly because I wasn’t sure if my caramel apples would turn out ok, but they ended up pretty yummy afterall.)

DSCN2525    WP_20130928_004The little fall candles were from Bath and Body works and they even wrapped them all up for me and everything!

Outer Space Baby Shower

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A few months ago, I hosted an Outer Space baby shower for a friend and her baby boy.  Thanks to my friend Liz, I didn’t have to do much with the food, so I got to focus on my favorite things:  the decorations, games and favors!  Here are the pictures with descriptions below them:

deirdre_invite_proofEThe invitation created in Adobe Illustrator

IMG_3639This is a foam wreath, covered with white tulle.  Then I cut out the rocket, star, and banner with my cricut and just pinned it onto the foam and added a ribbon to hang it.

IMG_3642Here is another banner made from my Cricut.

IMG_3648Here, I printed out different planets and cut them out.  You can use a glue stick on the picture side of the paper and paste them to the bottom of a clear plate to go with the theme of the party.

IMG_3647 The food and cut out stars scattered around.

IMG_3645I bought these whirly decorations of Amazon.

IMG_3644More cut out stars strung and displayed around.

IMG_3643  Fun baby shower Memory game.  Instructions HERE

IMG_3641

The favors were popcorn balls with a little blue food coloring!

 IMG_3640

Baby Shower Memory Game

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IMG_3643RThis baby shower game was first introduced by my sister-in-law at my first baby shower 10 years ago and I have used it a LOT at the showers that I have hosted and it is always a lot of fun and a nice change from the traditional baby shower games out there.  (I always like to discover more unique baby shower games).
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Here’s how it works.  You make a board like the one above on some poster board… you can add more or fewer numbers depending on how many people will be at the shower.  It is played like the children’s memory games, where the guest need to take turns to try to find the matching words below.  (For example, if someone says #3 and you flip up the card and the word under it is “baby girl”, then they need to guess another number to find the other “baby girl”)  When a match is made, remove the top numbered papers and give the guesser a candy prize (listed below).  Play the game until all the words have been guessed.
Now here’s the fun part.  The words (like “baby girl”) are all baby or pregnancy related and the candy prize is a candy bar that goes with the word… so “baby girl” would get a “Baby Ruth” candy bar.  I have played it so many different times, that I came up with more words and candy bar combinations by spending some time in the candy isle at the drug store.  You can tailor it to the type of people/personalities that will be at the shower… you’ll see what I mean when you see the word list below… some take a fun crowd to appreciate them!  🙂    TIP:  I have found the most candy bar selections at a drug store such as Bartells or Rite Aid.

So here are is the list of names/candy bar combinations that I have come up with, but be creative and come up with other combinations if you would like.  (Obviously if you are from a non-USA country, you may need to be creative with the candy bars sold there.)  Have fun!

Baby’s Cheeks ———————– Kissables (hersheys)
Breasts ——————————— Mounds
Baby Poop —————————  Tootsie Roll
Contractions ————————-  Whoppers
Engorgement ————————  Milkfuls
Crowning —————————–  Look bar
Enima ———————————- Gobstoppers
Epidural ——————————-  Life savors
Gestational Diabetes ————–  Sugar babies
Inverted Nipples ——————-    Milk duds
(Husband’s name) —————–   Big Hunk bar or Sugar Daddy
OB-GYN ——————————  Butterfingers
Conception—————————   Score bar
Sleepless Nights ——————— Now & Later or Rocky Road or Good n Plenty
Uh Oh!  It’s a (opposite gender)–  Shockers

It’s a girl or Baby Girl ————    Baby Ruth
Child genius ————————– Smarties
College cost/hospital bills———  100 Grand
Breastfeeding————————- Milky Way
Sex Life before Baby—————  Good n Plenty
Sex Life after Baby—————— Zero
Triplets ——————————–  3 Musketeers
Fat Baby——————————- Chunky bar
Only 3 pushes———————–  Reece’s Fast Break
Boy’s Names ————————  Mike & Ike
Umbilical Cord ———————   Red Rope
Tummy after Pregnancy———-  Jelly Belly
How Mom feels after Labor—-    Carefree gum
Baby’s name?———————–  Whatchamacallit”
(Mom’s name)———————–  Mamba
Grandmas—————————– Lifesavers
Bottle————————————Bottle Candy
Pacifier———————————-Ring Pop
Labor & Delivery——————–  Push Pop or Rocky Road bar
Pictures of Baby———————-Mentos
Baby Fat——————————–Rolos
Baby or (Baby’s name)————  Junior Mints
Little Boys (if having a boy)—–   Gummy worms
Little Girls (if having a girl)——-  Chiclets gum or sugar babies
Colicky Baby               ————  Cry Babies
Laundry ——————————- Mounds

Bling baby shower

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I wanted to do a couple catch up blogs from past baby showers. This one is one I co-hosted with a friend in 2011.  I wish I had more pictures, but my camera battery died during that one. It was super cute and fun and sparkly.

 
We added jewels to flowers cut out on my cricut (paper lace cartridge) for the labels and to scatter around the table and we bought a few more sparkly jewels and hanging crystals to scatter around too.

Check out the super fun crystals we hung from the tissue poms!  (the instructions for making the poms are on the martha stewart website)

I made some home-made jewel/gem shaped candies for the party favors.  You can find the molds for the candies HERE.  They take a couple tries to get the color just right and the timing of pouring the super hot sugar!

 

Pretty right?!  I want to do another Bling party!!

Dr Seuss baby shower

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Oh, The Places You’ll Go!  Well, that happens to be my friend’s favorite children’s book, so it was easy to come up with a plan for what theme to do her baby shower.  Mary and I went to work with the planning.  I was so thankful that Mary decided to take care of all the food and I did the decorations and games because I am not a huge fan of the food part and that’s the part that always feels more stressful to me (due to its more last minute nature).  Man, this was a fun shower to plan, with pretty much free rein of all those bright colors and the whimsical style of Dr. Seuss stuff, and all the ideas I found online.  (I couldn’t do any pinterest pinning this time though, because I wanted the guest of honor to be surprised!, so I had to do thing the “old fashion” way… Bing and Google!)  There was a lot of good ideas out there, so thank you everyone!  It probably was one of my favorite showers to help create!

Here are the pictures!

These were inspired from the book Oh, the Places You’ll Go and I had some extra large cardboard in the garage, so I just cut out the shapes and spray painted them and duct taped them together in the back and a little to the house to keep them from falling down.
Tried to imitate the balloons from the book also.  Colored the striped (after they were blown up)  with permanent markers
The trees also inspired from the book.  I made these by using 5 sheets of tissue paper, accordian folded them and wired them around the center (just like the regular tissue paper puffs), cut both outer edge into a point, Then I used a heavier wire from Home Depot cut it twice the length needed, took a balloon clip weight, put the wire through the hole to the middle of the wire and folded the wire in half.  Then, with the ends of the wire toward the prepared tissue, I wrapped the thin wire around the tissue paper around the heavy wire to attach.  Next, I took black duct tape and wrapped it around the heavy wire to hide it all the way down to the balloon clip.  I did also have to wrap the taped wire around the balloon clip a little bit to make it strong enough to hold the flower up and then clipped it to the buckets (or anything you want).  Last, I fluffed out the tissue paper, mostly just one on side, so the top stays mostly flat to look like the Dr Seuss trees.  And voila!

I also loved the vases (idea I found online) wrapped with a blue boa and hot-glued the ends together.
Momma-to-be in all her glory!
Dr. Seuss phrases and characters for around the house!  (Printed and cut out)

Everyone had fun doing this and there sure were some funny ones!

One of the games (203 was the answer by the way).  Another game not shown was a crossword puzzle.  You can create your own here.  So, I did it fill-in-the-blank style based on the book, Oh The Places You’ll Go.
The 3rd game we played.  Some may recognize from a previous shower I did.  I had a lot of fun with Photoshop and took random baby faces and super-imposed them over celebrities and the guests needed to guess the celebrity.
I remembered I had this teapot my mom bought for my girls, so I just HAD to do the fish in the pot!

Food table
plates from Celebrate Express
Mary made this wonderful diaper silverware holder!

Party favors
Congrats sweetie!  Can’t wait to meet the little one!

Owl baby shower for a girl

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I suppose some of you remember when I did an owl baby shower last year for my friend’s baby boy?  Well, recently I hosted another owl shower for a little girl and it looked completely different!!  It was such a fun shower to do because my friend just adopted a baby girl, so the little one was able to come to her own baby shower and it was just such a sweet time celebrating this wonderful act of love and redemption. 

The inspiration for the shower was the crib bedding they chose for the nursery from Pottery Barn Kids here.  I have to thank Renee, Katy, Meghan, and Lisa for helping me with the food, supplies and decorations.  I didn’t even have to do any of the food prep, so I am very thankful for that!

banner thanks to the handy Cricut!  🙂
I love this shot of the guests of honor chatting on the chair!  It is precious.
Renee painted this lovely design on the wood letters and also the bird houses.  The branches, birds and 2 owls are printed on cardstock, cut and taped to pictureshelves (or wall). 

 

So cute, right?


Found this adorable owl at a local gift shop!




The food table


The topiaries were made by painting ceramic pots, inserting a piece of styrofoam in the bottom (covered up with some dried filling stuff), painted wooden dowel, the top is a styrofoam ball (I did paint this a quick covering of pink before I started)covered with paper flowers and leaves (cricut flower shop cartridge) and attached with a pearl stick pin.

The little ceramic birds are from Finland

Love these plates/napkins from Party Pail

Great idea Meghan to put fruit into krumkake shells

These petit fours were amazing!

Thanks Trader Joes

Lisa’s bacon wrapped dates

Chicken yummy on pitas

Lisa made these super cute chocolates for party favors

And the sweet Maya herself!  Such a precious gift from God!!  Welcome sweet little one!

We had a hoot! (Owl Themed baby shower)

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So, last weekend I hosted a baby shower for my bestie.  She is going to have a boy in August!  It was probably the most fun baby showers I have planned so far.  There are a lot of cute ideas for owl themed stuff out there, but actually most were geared toward girls (AKA pink)  and others were more “barn owl” style, which is a little too flea market like for what I was looking for.  But I still did get a lot of great ideas from my online research. 
So after the date was decided, I got the guest list from the momma-to-be and saw that it was 59 people… so, first thing on my to do list was to recruit help!  So, thanks to 5 other wonderful ladies, I had enough help to make this an awesome shower for her.  I did most of the decor and party favors while the other ladies took care of all the food, games, prizes and other random details.  So, thanks again to Michelle, Rachel, Sarah, Ursula, and Christy for helping me!

Anyway… I suppose you’d like to see the pictures now, huh?  Here goes:

Banner made from paper and buttons and some garden twine.  (idea from here)

I found these awesome hanging decorations here.  They were pretty easy to make.  The large ones take 12 sheets of 12X12 paper… the small ones that I made are  5 1/2″ diameter.
close up detail

Printed out these branches (actually 4 sheets, glued together) and covered my picture frame shelves with them.  I am really happy with how they turned out and it was such an easy way to add to the decor.  The green owl is also a printout.  Thanks to a friend, I was able to borrow some owl things (top shelf) and found a couple crochet patterns online and made a couple more.)
Crocheted owl … pattern found HERE

Another crocheted owl… HERE is the pattern
The tables

Owl printout (2 sheets glued together to be double sided) and I didn’t glue the bottom, so that it could just sit in the branches.

Gorgeous owl vase borrowed from a friend

Borrowed Owl Pitcher
Borrowed stuffed owl

One of the games
Napkins

Michelle made the super cute food labels and the food was amazing!  sooo yummy

Adorable owl cupcakes

These are the party favors.  I sewed these little owls sorta using THIS idea (original pattern here), but redesigned the pattern a little to make them able to open … and used a small piece of velcro to hold the beaks shut.  Then I made some homemade caramel corn to fill them with (in little baggies) … I just used up buttons from my collection, so each owl was one of a kind.
Lastly, here are some other links for ideas:
A Creative Momma
Thoughtfully Simple
Owl Hand Puppet
Owl pillows

SUPER cute Owl purse

So there you go!  Congrats Angie and can’t wait to meet the new little guy!