Once Upon a Time, Long, Long Ago . . .

Amanda, Kristin, and I threw a baby shower for Eva.  If you read the Sycamore Street Press blog, you know that sweet baby Ingrid has arrived!  I have yet to meet Ingrid since Creed's been sick, and now I'm sick so I'll just have to make due with posting about her shower and looking forward to holding that little one when we're all better.

We knew Eva wanted something simple and relaxed so she could chat with all her friends so we put together a cookies and milk baby shower.  We held the shower at Kristin's house and Kirk insisted in pitching in by letterpressing the invites that Kristin designed.

We all made a few different kinds of cookies and some of the guests brought cookies too so it was a feast!

I was happy to finally have a reason to test my new message cookie cutters and I loved how well they worked.

 Two days before the shower, Kristin and I realized that we had no activity planned for the shower, and we thought it might be nice since a lot of the guests didn't know each other so she picked up some onesies and trim, and I picked up ribbon and brought sewing supplies, and we let Eva's crafty friends decorate onesies.

 I wish I would have taken pictures of all of the onesies because they turned out really cute, but I did get a picture of my favorite made by Susan.

It was so much fun to watch Eva open all of her gifts because there were a lot of lovely homemade things.  She really has some clever friends!

And thanks to the bounty of cookies, we were able to let each gift fill a box with cookies to take home.

I borrowed this last photo from Eva's sister-in-law, Kirsten's blog.

Kirk and Eva are such great friends so it was really nice to be able to help do something for them.

Lisa's Baby Shower - Part 4 - The Party Favors

This is my last baby shower post, I promise!

I wanted to come up with some kind of shower favor that would be useful, because I've gone home with a lot of cute favors that I had no idea what do to with that eventually had to be tossed. I always want to burn CDs for people, but since we like to keep things legal around here and through I-Tunes you can only burn things seven times, a CD wasn't a party favor option until recently when I-Tunes made it legal to upgrade your songs for a small fee and have a hayday burning as many copies as you like. Wahoo!

For Lisa's shower I put together a list of lullabies that I thought she would love to share with her little one (similar to the list I posted in the past with a few new discoveries).

I figure that even if you don't have a little one, you'll babysit a niece or nephew or grandchild and its always handy to know a lullaby or two. Is there anything that you would have added?

Lisa's Baby Shower - Part 3 - What we did at the shower

I knew that Lisa likes baby showers with some sort of activity since it makes it a little less awkward when a lot of the guest don't know each other. I wasn't sure what to do with such a big group, but finally decided to try embellishing onesies with fabric designs since that could be a simple, fast project so people could rotate through. I drew up a bunch of simple designs (most my own, you'll recognize them from some of my prints for Sycamore Street Press, and a few others that I couldn't resist adding). Then Lisa's mom provided the onesies and I picked up some fat quarters of fabric and Heat & Bond. I just laid out scissors, a cutting mat, circle punch, and pencils and let guest go to town.

I think they actually had a lot of fun making them. I even heard a few that were planning to make more at home, which made me feel good.

We hung the finished onesies as part of the shower decorations
Here are a few so you can see how simple and cute they turned out (Sorry they all have horrible lighting, but I sent them home with Lisa, of course, so I couldn't take photos later)


I struggle a bit with baby shower games because I'm not a fan of most of them. They can be gross or awkward and embarrassing for both the guests, and the guest of honor. I spotted a shower game that I loved a while back, available here, and made a similar quiz with Lisa's help. I was happy with the way that they turned out and wish that I got a picture of them all lined up.
The other game that we played was a name game, where guests tried to name some children's book characters that I provided pictures of. I hosted this game at another shower, but this time I blew up all of the pictures and framed them.
Then of course after the games and food, we oohed and aahed over Lisa's gifts as she opened them.

Lisa's Baby Shower - Part 2 - The Shower!

So I woke up the morning of Lisa's shower knowing that my house was a mess and I had no party decorations since I'd been busy planning games and activities. Whoops! Luckily, I bought extra paper for the invites so I started cutting and sewing and ten minutes later, I had a simple garland.

I also made a bunch of paper airplanes that I hung around my chandelier with fishing line (Pardon the backlit picture with no one smiling)
I was so grateful that Lisa's mom was in charge of food and I only had to gather drinks. I collected a bunch of different orange drinks in individual bottles and thought I went overboard and had way too many, but ended up with just enough.
And I couldn't resist these adding these blue paper straws.
I used extra scraps of paper to put little flags around one of the cake plates
and little paper airplanes for the mini red velvet cupcakes that Lisa's mom made.
She did such a great job with the food. She even made cookies using only orange M&M's

And had a lot of orange and blue candy.

The other thing that made things look really festive were the big round orange balloons Lisa's mom ordered, because Lisa LOVES balloons.

I hope Lisa felt spoiled on her special day!

Lisa's Baby Shower - Part 1 - The Invitations

Last weekend, I hosted a shower for my lovely friend Lisa, who is expecting a baby boy to arrive in the middle of December. I made the invitations myself, and I had to make 30 of them so I tried to keep things simple (you know I tend to go overboard). For some reason baby girl themes come so much easier to me (ironic considering that I only have a son) so after some brainstorming, I decided to go with paper airplanes because I thought it would be cute to have paper airplanes all over at the shower for decorations, and I've never seen anyone do that.

So here's the invite:

I made everything turquoise and orange because those are the prominent colors that Lisa used to decorate her nursery. I picked up some scrapbooking paper in those colors and cut them up and folded hundreds of tiny paper airplanes during our long drive to and from Disneyland. Then I used them like confetti and stuffed some in each envelope. I even found paper from American Crafts that was orange on one side and had paper airplanes on the other side that I printed the invites on so this is what they looked like from the back.
I designed some quick corresponding labels and printed them on my inkjet printer, but if they get even a tiny bit wet, they run all over the place so I covered each one with clear packing tape and cut them out.

Doesn't it always feel good to look at a stack like this that you have completed?
More shower details to come soon!