summer baby shower

this past summer i had the pleasure of co-hosting my best friend's baby shower.  i had helped out with other showers in the past, but i really wanted this one to be extra special and i took the lead on planning/decorating.  let me just say, it was a joy but also way more work than i had anticipated.  lol.  for one thing, i'm a huge procrastinator so that probably had a lot to do with all the stress i was feeling.

i was in such a rush to get everything done at the last minute that i didn't take the time to take some really good pics.  so i completely apologize for the quality of these pics.  i think that's why i didn't blog about this back in the summer, i just wasn't pleased with these pics.  also, i didn't get any pics after people started arriving, so no pic of me and my bestie.

i started out by designing the invitation on my computer.  once it was printed on regular copy paper, i cut it down and adhered it to cardstock.  originally i was going to cut down my heavy weight cardstock, but at the last opted to buy precut cardstock at hobby lobby which turned out to be perfect and a huge timesaver.  after the printed invitation was glued down to the cardstock i wanted to add something to it and make it feel a bit more special and also wanted each one to feel unique.  i decided to apply glue to the edge and apply a mixture of white/clear glitters.

for the flip side of the invite i wanted to give it more of a scrapbook/homemade feel.  the easiest thing would of been to come up with a simple design to repeat on each.  but since i wanted it to remain unique i didn't want to go the cookie-cutter route.  so i gathered a bunch of papers, washi tape and stickers in the color scheme.  then i took plain white doilies and used mists to alter them to go with the color scheme.  in the end i was pretty happy with how they all turned out.  the majority of them were hand delivered but i also needed to mail out about 1/3 of them so i had to remember to keep some of the designs pretty flat.  i didn't get a pic, but for the ones hand delivered i took small pink treat bags and used a decorative punch on the ends.  then after the invite was in the bag i punched two holes at the ends to run ribbon through to secure the invites in the bag.

moving on to the actual shower.  we had it in our church dining hall.  so we took most of the tables and made a large square out of them.  here is a pic of the table for the parents-to-be (well, technically they were already parents as this was their 4th child).  we used a different color table cloth for their table.  also we ran some paper garland along it that i'd purchased at the local dollar store.  i bought a couple bunches of flowers from sams club and used them to decorate the table along with some altered canvas' i had made.  in the background you can see the gift table, drink station and food tables.

on the food table we used some more of the purchased paper garland.  i had seen a really lovely painted board w/ roses here on the ruffled blog. i thought it was so lovely and wanted to create some boards with the same feel.  it was incredibly simple.  i purchased two foam core boards from hobby lobby and simply used some acrylic paints i had on hand to give them an ombre' feel.  i also used large doilies i found at the dollar store and yarn, butterflies and some other paper pieces from hobby lobby.  the roses i cut out on my silhouette machine.  and the bunting was simply some triangles i cut out by hand and added a bit of distressed ink to.

i also made the cupcakes, but used wrappers i bought at tjmaxx.  the pink bowl is holding pink sixlets candy.  my mom made pink lemonade whoopie sandwich cookies.  and i took marshmallows, put a stick in them, dipped them in white chocolate and then pink sugar.

finally i bought bunches and bunches of tissue paper and made these little clusters to put along all the tables in the square where everyone sat.  also in the middle of that square we hung from the ceiling some chinese lanterns with butterflies along with some balls made of tissue paper.

it was definitely a lot of work, but nothing too hard.  just in the future i'd need to have a bit better time management so not to get as stressed ;-)

my friend, shelly and her husband received a really good selection of gifts for baby adelyn.  i also took blank greeting cards, one for each person at the party, stamped happy birthday on them and passed them out along with an envelope.  on each envelope a number was written down from 1 up through how many people were there, which i believe was around 18.  each person would look at the number on the envelope and write a birthday greeting on the card for adelyn to receive on her coordinating birthday.  and at the end i collected all the cards, which were in the envelopes and gave to shelly to hand to adelyn on each of her birthdays.  oh, and i also printed out and had everyone fill out a 'wishes for baby' similar to this one.  these keepsake items were a great hit with all the guests as well as with shelly.  we also had some games, but the keepsakes really help everyone feel more connected to the family.

- jess