Carnival Theme Baby Shower

Recently I helped to host a pink carnival themed baby shower.  Let me say the hardest part about this shower was getting people to understand that it was carnival themed, not circus themed.  Circus is elephants and ring leaders and bears, carnival is more games, cotton candy, and ferris wheels.  Which is why it is very pink.  When all else failed, I just said go for pink!  :)

Cute striped straws are always a hit!  You can get them pretty cheap in bulk on Amazon.com.  These i bought were actually kind of flimsy, so I'd say look for some that are a bi more sturdy.  But the striped straws I think are a conversation starter and just a nice touch that shows you paid attention to details.

This was the modge podge gift I made an earlier post about.  People could write notes to baby and Mom and add them to the appropriate box.  The sign I made said:
'Write a note for Baby as she grows
And
A note for Mom on evenings she doesn't doze.
Something encouraging or something light
to help make her night!'

Don't knock the rhyme, I came up with it myself!

What an amazing cake, right?  Holiday Market in Royal Oak (here in Michigan) did a great job of sticking to the theme plus adding a few things that one of the future Grandma's wanted (but wasn't really in the carnival theme).  Turned out amazing, and tasty too!

 I wish I had something on my cricut that was carnival themed, but I didn't, so i just did a basic banner for the new baby!

Overall, I think it turned out really well, but most of all I hope the Mom it was for liked it!

Since at the time I was pregnant, my husband decided this was the last party I could help throw because it was just too exhausting doing it plus trying to prep for our new baby!  Next time, maybe I'll just order cute stuff from zulily rather than make it myself!

Modge Podge gift for a new Mom

I recently helped to host a friend's baby shower (more on that later) and instead of a regular guest book, I suggested two boxes - one labeled Mom where people could write a note to her for those days when it was really tough.  Like those 3am late night diaper changes and the baby just cries and cries.  Ug, not looking forward to that again!  As well as one labeled baby that people could write a note to the baby to read one day.  She liked that idea, so we went with it.

I'm not a big fan of guestbooks, here are two other things i did for friend's baby showers:
- actual scrapbook pages where people wrote notes on the scrapbook page and then it went into baby's scrapbook
- frame where people signed the matting.  That's what a friend had done for their wedding, so when the baby shower came around, I thought, what a good idea to go with that!

Her baby shower and baby room were pink and white, so I wanted to keep with that.

I took a trip to Joann's and found little brown box set that would fit index cards.  The plan was to modge podge scrapbook paper on them to make it fit the theme.  But then I found a really cute pink metal lunch box so I picked that for the baby one.  I thought it was cute and would probably stand the test of time a little better.

For the Mom one, I found pink and green scrapbook paper that said 'Mom' and variations of the word Mom all over it.  I already had the modge podge, sponge, etc at home.

I put the mod podge all over the box, then added the paper and cut it to the appropriate size.  I think I used three or four sheets to do it, mostly because I added it to the inside, and then on the sides cut out squares to cover the seams.  I should have taken better photos.  

I also found little wood letters that I painted black, spray painted with clear spray and then glued to the top.  

For the baby lunch box, I bought vinyl sticker paper in hot pink and white and used the Storybook cricut cartridge.  White was the shadow option and hot pink was the regular letters.  Can't really see the white well, but I thought it added a little something to it.

This is the note I created for my friend's shower so people knew what it was for.  Don't judge the rhyme, I made it up myself and I am definitely not a poet.  :)

It said:
Write a note for Baby as she grows
And
A Note for Mom on evenings she doesn't doze.
Something encouraging or something light
to help make her night!

This was the set up at the shower with the two boxes open, note cards for people to write something on and put in there.

 I was happy with the way it turned out, I hope my friend is too!  Too bad I couldn't find something pink and white striped on Zulily, but oh well!

Frog Baby Shower

I hosted a baby shower for a friend of mine who didn't know if she was having a boy or a girl.  I decided on green with frogs because they painted their nursery green.  It was the shower that I had made the frog quilt for!

Sadly, I didn't take any photos until afterwards, so it doesn't look quite as nice as it had been.

My mother in law picked up the little frog inflatable i had on the drink table, but what I really liked were the green and white straws that I found. So cute!

We played the poopie diaper game where you put a melted chocolate bar in the diaper and then everyone has to guess what kind it is.  We had two giveaways in the brown bags, one tea themed and one spa themed.

This was the first diaper cake I ever made!  There has to be an easier way to do it, but I was happy with the way it turned out.  Obviously I have a little frog and also have daffodils out the top.  Our daffodils had FINALLY come up even though it was almost May.  The weather finally cheered up here in Michigan just in time for this shower for my friend's family to fly in.

Cake was so cute, green polk a dots in a light green around the sides and a green frog on top.  

I made the banner with my new cricut - street signs cartridge for the triangles and the same for the lettering.  The frog is from create a critter.  I hung it up with green ribbon and mini wooden clothes pins.

I just realized that none of these photos show the nice new paint job I did!  I'll have to do another post on that.  It was grayish - blueish - white and now it's some nice shades of brown.  It will just be nice to have a large rug to cover up the terrible grayish blue carpet and then eventually get a hanging light since it's so dark in there at night.  A few months ago One Kings Lane had a really gorgeous rug on sale I thought would look good, so now I'm just hoping to find another one like it!

Frog Quilt

This Saturday I'm hosting a friend's baby shower.  She doesn't know if it's a boy or girl and didn't want a theme that was overly froo-froo.  So I picked frogs because they painted their nursery a very bright green.  Or as her husband said - Kermit the Frog green.  And that answered what I should do for her quilt!  I knew I wanted to try something a little different than the Noah's Ark one and preferably easy because I need to start work on another friend's baby quilt as well.  Why I keep signing myself up for so many projects, I don't know.

I thought these little squares that were about 8x8 inches would be easy to sew.  Well, not really, they were hard to get exact (I'm not so good at the measuring exact part yet) and then sewing it together so that all the seams matched up.  Thankfully my Mother in Law was there to help so it didn't turn out too bad.

The goal was to put frogs on all the squares, but I got a bit lazy.  My favorite part: the one with the tongue catching the bug!  I feel so creative for coming up with that.

I wasn't going to do a border, but I thought it looked a bit unfinished, so I added the red border.  All the fabric is from JoAnn's.

My other favorite part, the super cute turtle, bug, and frog fabric for the backing.  The other bad idea on this quilt - putting a border on the back.  Ug.  Trying to get the borders on the front and back to match was impossible.  They're not quite matching, but they're close!  Hopefully my friend won't mind.  It doesn't look bad, but I want everything to be perfect.  I have to remind myself it's only my second quilt.

Now my next project is to finally finish the stupid guest bathroom that mocks me every day.  I want to find a nice painting or something for that room to finish it off from One Kings Lane.

Baby Boy Shower

A friend of ours was having a second baby, a boy this time!  A small group of us got together to throw her a little shower, a sprinkle.  What I love most about everything here, is the cake.  I asked Sorella's Baked Goods in Livonia to make a cake with light blue and dark blue dots (that's all the direction I gave them), and this is what they came up with.  This is why I like working with professionals.  I go to  this bakery all the time because they can take my basic instructions and turn it into something amazing.