One of my closest friends is having a baby! In less than a month and a half, in fact! And I had the honor of throwing her a baby shower. But not just any baby shower. She already had a shower just for family and wanted to include her friends. As we all know, showers can be a bit stressful and uncomfortable. She wanted more of a celebration with her friends than a traditional shower.
She loves trees, and since there were only 10 people coming, I decided to make the invitations. I drew the image of a tree and had my (more tech-savvy than me) Mom scan it into the computer, refine the lines and print enough for all of the guests. I cut out fabric for the leaves and baby blanket and glued it onto the cover of the card. I also took a pink colored pencil and ever so lightly colored the baby's little cheeks.
For the decorations, My sister, Laura and I folded tissue paper into big pom poms. I found the idea on Pinterest from SewSweetStitches' blog. They turned out really cute.
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For the favors, I ordered succulents from The Succulent Garden on Etsy. I thought their prices were very reasonable. They shipped the succulents safely all the way from California with no trouble at all! Laura and I hot glued ribbons around the pots. Everyone seemed to love them!
As a gift for the Mom-to-be I had my Mom print out a large version of the tree that was used for the invitation cover. I've seen this idea several other places before and thought it was cute. Everyone who attended the shower put their thumb print on the tree using an ink pad and then initialed it. (We all put two prints each to fill it in). I purchased a frame for the print and will frame it for the baby's nursery.
I made two cakes. My friend is waiting to find out what she is having so I made a "boy" cake and a "girl" cake. Basically, I found two cakes on Pinterest that I wanted to make and couldn't decide between them. The blue cake is a buttermilk cake with Arnold Palmer filling and frosting. It has a lemon cream filling and a butter cream frosting with sweat tea that I cooked down for flavor. I got that recipe from Pink Parsley. The pink cake is a pink lemonade cake from Sugar Baby Aprons.
I had a hot chocolate bar set up with homemade hot chocolate from CDKitchen and also a non-alcoholic punch from Tidy Mom. Everything turned out really cute!
Finally, for our activity, I set up a photo booth. This was so much fun! A friend of mine is a photographer, so she was able to bring lighting and her photography knowledge with her. I have another friend who performs in a burlesque group and has a wonderful collection of costumes and accessories. Everyone had fun dressing up and taking silly pictures.
I think everyone had a great time. It was a lot of fun to do and I was so excited to put this together for such a good friend. My sister helped a considerable amount and I couldn't have pulled it off without her.
