Baby Shower :: Pink & Green Baby Animals

Well hello and thanks for coming back this week! I’m thrilled to share the details of my beautiful sister-in-law Kari’s shower that my mother-in-law Sally and I threw. Let’s get this party started! Come on in……and take a load off!Kari made it really easy on us when it came to themes! She wanted pink & green giraffes & elephants with a little brown thrown in for fun, but no animal print. Wish granted! What a fun idea we got to work with… and we didn’t even have to use our brains! Hooray! I designed the invite with her name strung between a pink giraffe and a green elephant, then used and abused the graphic in all the party decor. Oh and hey! Notice something familiar? Yep! Told you I’d steal that circle backdrop idea for some photo ops. Just 8″ paper circles strung together. It turned out darling and we got some great shots of all the guests holding little animals. How pretty does Ms. Kari look?The three tables were explosions of pinks and greens. I filled pink wood boxes from Target with scotch moss (but would also look darling with wheat grass) and added the animals on dowels to keep with the theme. Tablecloths were made from fabric from a discount fabric store nearby, bud vases were either mine or stolen from my mom, and to keep things fresh, we stuck with one color tulip (pink of course!) from good old Trader Joe’s.Sally found those sweet napkins at Sur La Table and I added the “Wishes for Baby” game on each place setting. The guests filled them out during lunch and I think this was the best way this game has worked… everyone actually filled one out. What a cute keepsake for the mom-to-be. (Oh, those pencils? Just golf pencils wrapped in wrapping paper and taped. We just couldn’t let ‘ugly’ into the house.)Each table had different tablecloths and plates yet it all tied in color-wise. I think it’s nice to mix it up a bit and not have things so matchy matchy as long as it still reads like the same party.
And though I am kicking myself for not making the poms hanging over head (I got them on etsy), they sure made the party look adorable.Stay tuned this week because I will show you how to make these things. It’s sickeningly easy! I think my 2 year old could make them.Okay, back to the party…I had to re-wrap that water bottle, of course…Sally found the cutest girly outfits for the clothesline……and as the guests arrived, more gifts appeared…Let the fun begin!I loved throwing this party with Sally because she took care of all the food – which is why it was delicious! She also had these bright pink cupcakes made. Super fun.
And again, I repeated the invite design again as a cupcake topper…The backdrop on the cake table was just a tablecloth I had laying around.While gifts were being opened, guests doodled on diapers for Kari and ate those yummy cupcakes.As favors, Sally came up with the idea of giving each lady a primrose. What a functional favor! I loved that idea. I wrapped the pots (again, no ugly allowed here!), and added a skewer with each guest’s name on it along with it’s meaning. (Yep. My name still meant “Frickin Awesome.” Puzzling, huh?) It was a day filled with insane amounts of love for our Kari! Her friends were all so sweet and she is a glowing mommy-to-be.I hope that this party shows that even if you don’t have – or can’t go out and buy – decorations, or in this case, have a theme that would be challenging to buy decor for, you can still create a very cool and cohesive shindig. Using paper animals over and over again kept this party consistent, cute, and very DIY-able. It may take a little longer to put something like this together but as long as you’re patient with the scissors, you can recreate something like this very easily. And you’ll be able to pull it off  with any possible theme you dream up.
Thanks again for following along! Have a wonderful Monday!

Baby Shower :: Birds & Bees Tea

Last March I got to meet my adorable niece but before her big debut, we got to celebrate her mom-to-be. My sister has the family nickname of “Bee” so a “Birds & Bees Tea” was a given when it came to choosing a theme.Us hosts (my mom, my sister-in-law Kelly, and I) knew we wanted to decorate with tons of birds, bees, and pennant flags so I incorporated all of those elements into the design of the invite.We wanted it to feel like you walked into Gramercy Tavern in New York (they always have the most amazing flowers) from the moment you walked through the door. The whole walkway (not pictured) up to the door was littered with potted tulips, azaleas, ranunculus, and other spring flowers. This was one of the biggest costs of the party but the great thing about buying potted plants as opposed to cut flowers is that you can plant them in your garden as soon as the party is over. Win win!We sewed birds & bees out of felt, whip-stitched them, put wire in their wings and hung them from fishing line both outside and throughout the house. The wreath was on sale after Easter years ago but it suited the theme perfect with those blue robin’s eggs. We set up the bar in the entry way and served blueberry, orange, and pomegranate mimosas, wine, lemonade, iced tea, and sparkling water. You can’t really tell but we put sheet moss all over the table so it looked like you were picking your drinks up from a grassy field. We hung more birds, bees, and pennant flags that my mom made with scraps of fabric throughout the house.The Bee (my sister Ellie) walked through the door and my mom threw a nest on her head. She owned it! Could she look any cuter? I do not think so!We hung more pennant flags throughout the house……and decorated every nook of the house with eggs, beehives, nests, birdhouses, and more flowers and moss.You may be thinking, “where the heck did they find all these things?” Well… first of all, whenever you can, repurpose things you already have. My mom had a ton of these decorations from her Easter displays over the years. She found the bee skeps at Tuesday Morning randomly but she had collected the birdhouses and Easter egg things over the years. Pretty much everything you’ll see on this blog is either from Home Goods, Tuesday Morning, or Marshalls and sometimes Cost Plus, Michael’s and JoAnn’s (but only if we have a coupon.) Also, borrow, borrow, borrow! Everyone likes to help a friend out so if you know someone who loves birdhouses, ask if you can borrow a few.The swirly branches on the mantle is just an unwound wreath from Michael’s. (This is also a great trick for a wine-tasting party. Just add fake grapes and you have a grape-vine.) The font used on the banner was purchased for $2.99 from TwoPeasInABucket. They have lots of cutesy fonts… pretty perfect when it comes to girly showers.My grandma was cleaning out her house and had two really old beat up brown bird cages that she didn’t want. We’ll take them! We spray-painted one green and one pink and put flowers inside. Easy.More from the shower…We played two ‘games’ that weren’t really games. (You’ll see recreations of these two games at just about every baby shower we throw.) The first one was an idea from the girls at lilSugar. I used to work for Sugar Inc. and the lil girls had me design PDFs for baby showers. I loved this idea of theirs so much that I keep recreating it. It’s a “Wishes for Baby” sheet and gives you prompts like “I hope you love ________.” and “I hope you learn__________.” Everyone fills one out for the baby-to-be and afterwards we bind it into a book for the mom to keep. It’s so sweet to see what the guests come up with and becomes a keepsake long after the shower is over.We also “diaper doodled” where you write messages on newborn diapers so that the mom will have something to laugh at at 2am when she’s changing diapers. I’ll post an example of this at a later date.
As far as food went, well this time we totally lucked out because my sister-in-law is pretty much a gourmet chef! She handled all of it and not only was everything delish, it was also so cute!It was an afternoon shower so the fare was light but totally yummy! Grape & goat cheese crostinis, deviled eggs, endive, blue cheese and walnut appetizers… plus loads of sweet things as well.I loved these bird nest cupcakes with jelly bean eggs and gum ball bird heads. I can take NO credit for anything on this table. It was adorable.And my mom, the cookie queen strikes again…She’s insane.A look out to the patio, clothesline strung & bird cage in place!Vintage tea cups that my mom has collected over the years were our vessels of choice. You can recreate this by borrowing mismatched tea cups from friends or scouring thrift shops. (I’ll say though, that the mimosa bar got a little more play than these pretty cups did!) As favors, we made white chocolate covered pretzels with colorful sprinkles and put them into cellophane bags.We capped the bags with the names of the guest. Underneath their name, we wrote what their name meant. I never knew my name meant “Frickin’ Awesome” so that was a nice surprise for me. (I kid. I kid.)More details…It was a beautiful shower for a beautiful girl. And as a quick aside, THANK YOU to all of you lovely, lovely people who are already following this blog. I am so excited about it and I am even more excited to have such insane support and love right out of the gates. This is going to be a fun ride and that’s thanks to you! More tomorrow!