Baby Shower Fun

With Spring, comes new life in so many forms. My garden is growing spectacularly (I have lots of little seedlings poking their way up through the dirt in my gardens!). But a bigger thought in the Roots And Wings Co family right now is that of new babies. Our baby sister is having her first baby VERY soon! We are so excited for she and her husband and can't wait to meet her new little one! What better way to be excited for her than to show you guys what we did for the baby shower that we threw for her!

We started off with a sign in area. When you first walk into the house there is a half wall that is perfect for this. We had a cute framed sign with instructions. There were also instructions on the pack of cards that was there to write a tip of favorite baby items on. We made cute papers for everyone to sign in and write whatever they wanted. The pack of cards coordinated with the welcome sign and the sign in pages and had their baby's monogram on each one. They are not really "cutesie" parents and so we thought these colors worked so well and are beautiful. I have found myself at parties where you just didn't know what to do. Some times guests arrive when the hostess is busy, etc. So, I love the idea of having instructions everywhere. It helps keep the party moving and helps guests feel more comfortable.
On this same half wall in the entrance we were able to decorate and display other items. Here are the "goody bags". We found those adorable tiny bassinets on clearance at Walmart! Oh, yeah! We filled them with either blue hershey kisses, or nuts (for those nuts who don't like chocolate! Crazy people, like Anjeanette.). We wrapped those in tulle and tied them off with little cards that said "Thank You" on one side and had the baby's monogram on the other side. These were placed on a mini cupcake stand. I love mini cupcake stands and use them at every party we have! It's great to give height to your decorations.
Next to the bassinets were cu-ute clear boxes that had little blue feet running across them. We HAD to use these. Again they were found on clearance at WalMart! We filled these with green chocolates and mints.

Here is a shot from further back. However, the show stopper had to be what these goody bags were sitting on. Do you see that beautiful quilt? Ya! I want it too! That was Anjeanette's gift to our darling baby sister. Seriously, that girl can sew! She started making this first, and that's where we came up with the color scheme for everything else. How could we not coordinate everything to those gorgeous colors and fabric!? If you want a better shot of it, it's the first picture in this post! Gorgeous, hu!?
Anjeanette also made this lovely sign for the little one. So cute, hu!? It coordinated perfectly with the quilt.
Our sister's two friends thought it was at noon I think. It was at 3. Fun fun girls!


We were actually glad they came early. They are a hoot. How can you not love them?

Our family is always very big on food at these things!
We had chicken salad croissants:
These are a super easy and totally yummy idea for large get togethers. Buy those delish croissants from Costco. While you are at Costco, buy a large can of Mayo and can of chicken. You mix the mayo and chicken together and add in some chopped up celery and seasonings of your choice. Use this filling to stuff the croissants with. Super Dooper easy and Yum-O!

We also had some rolled cream cheese bites:
These are also super quick and easy. You take those refridgerated crescent dinner rolls, cream cheese (we prefer the herbed kinds), deli ham, and fresh spinach leaves. Roll out the dough and press together. Then, spread a layer of cream cheese, then a layer of ham and then spinach. Roll them up. Slice this roll into about 1/2 inch slices. Bake these for 12 minutes at 350. Again, Yum-O!

Another family favorite are the rolo pretzels:
Just take regular pretzels and lay them out on a cookie sheet. Top each one with a rolo. Add a walnut on top of this, although leave some without as not all people care for nuts (myself included in this bunch). Bake them until melted. Mmmm

We also had some magnificent Cheesecake squares that I don't have the recipe for (and don't remember who even brought them, but I'm thinking that Mom did!)

Fill in foods with store bought goodies like cream puffs, crackers, cheese, fruit and veggie trays and dips. We also had finger food munchies in baby bottles.
I always love doing a baby carriage bowl for the fruit. How cute and easy! You keep the handle attached by sticking toothpicks through it on the inside. Make sure to break off the toothpick so that it is flush with the cantaloupe. Otherwise, it's kind of pokey. I also have done this with watermellon, but due to the timing of the shower (Christmas time) there were no large ones to be found!Katrina was serving an amazing drink she made. It was like the hot caramel apple drink at Starbucks. You take apple juice and warm it up, then there is an apple/cinnamon flavoring from Starbucks that you put in it, you cover it in whipped cream and then drizzle carmel sauce on it. Hello!! So good.

I have an embroidery machine. So, one of my favorite things to do for a new baby is to embroider on a blanket for the baby. I gave our baby sister a blanket that says the baby's name in one corner. I kept this blanket because as soon as the baby is born I will then embroider the stats on each of the other corners. So, corner two would say the height and weight, corner three would say the date and time of birth, etc. I will embroider these up the day she has the baby and then mail them to her ASAP! I found this blanket as soon as I found out she was pregnant (and it just so happened to match the colors of the quilt Anjeanette made, how lucky is that?!). It is super soft and I just loved the colors of it!

The favorite part of the shower was the cute onesies that Anjeanette made! LOVE them! We've all seen people hang the onesies by clothespins. I had never done it before myself. I first painted all of the clothespins blue, because the little details totally matter! I was quite surprised by just how cute they all looked hanging on the line! I love things that can do double duty. These actually did triple duty. They were an awesome decoration, they were a fun "party game" and then they were a gift for our nephew to be!
Anjeanette had made up 24 onesies with 24 different designs freezer paper stenciled on them. We had them hanging "on a line". The designs themselves were so great! She cut them out by hand people! WOW!
We did not want cutesie designs. In fact one reason that we went this direction with these onesies is that we've seen baby showers where the guests use fabric paint to decorate onesies for the baby. Usually it kind of overwhelms some people, others do really cheesy decorations, and others are just not something the Mom actually will ever put her darling baby in. By having a stencil already to go, you eliminate all of these problems.
Painting these onesies really did end up being a fun activity for the guests. The guests got to choose which onesie they wanted to paint (they varied from newborn to 12 month in size). Then, we had a table set up with coordinating paints (again upping our odds that these onesies will really be worn). This gave the guests something to do which helped with the "small talk" problem. It got people chitchatting right away.

The designs were cut out from freezer paper and ironed them on ahead of time. All anyone had to do was pick which one they wanted to do and choose the paint they wanted. NICE! The above picture still looks a little messy because the freezer paper is still on the front. Below is a picture of many of the ladies painting up their onesies.

I think they turned out well. My favorite is hard to see. It is on the back row, second from the right. It is a shark swimming above a fish. The shark has a big grin on because he is going to eat the fish. Ok, maybe I was a little involved with the story to each onesie.

Anjeanette's all time favorite shower game is the diaper disaster game. You take a bunch of candy, melt it in the microwave and then smear each one into a seperate diaper. The outside of the diapers are numbered. Then you have to smell the diaper and try to tell what it was. My favorite picture for this game is to have someone smelling the number 2 diaper. I know. This is pretty funny too.

We did have other games as well. Mom bought essential small baby items and we arranged them on a tray. Then, you have the Mother-To-Be carry the tray around so that everyone gets a few seconds to look at the items. The guests have blank pieces of paper and pens so they think they are going to have to remember all the items. You have the Mother-To-Be "put the tray away" in the other room. Then, you tell the guests this is a memory game and they are to write down everything about the Mother-To-Be that they can. Extra points for extra descriptions such as, red dangly earings, etc. It's amazing how they generally wont have even looked at who is carrying the tray. This works well for a bridal shower as well! The great thing about this game is that then you give all the items from the tray to the Mother-To-Be.

Another game was a fill in the blank poem that is words of advice for the Parents-To-Be. Each blank is a candy bar. For extra fun for this one I wrapped blue ribbons around each of the candies. As I read the answers out I held up the candy that went along with it. Then, for the rest of the games (and we did this one first), we let the guests choose their gift from the basket of candy bars. Again, this fulfills my double duty need! =)

Yup, that's a smidgeon of the gang! They were all so helpful with this. It totally was a group effort. Isn't our Brother a hunk?! Back off ladies, he is taken...by our own Katrina. This is a pretty "calm" picture for us. As usual, I have to get goofy! Don't know what's up with that, just fulfilling my role as the...well, I don't know which role I fill for the family. But I make sure I have fun filling it! ;)

On the invitations we had asked guests to bring their favorite book, to add to the library for the new baby. I love doing this, and love the stories behind what books people chose, even more. Thankfully many of them even wrote inscriptions inside the front covers of the books. What treasures these books will be now! Our family is sooooo over the top in love with books! You have no clue. Some day we will have to show you our Dad's personal libraries!

I really love that most of the guests did this! One friend brought the book that her husband had written and illustrated himself! How cool is that?! So, it's a copy with an autograph and inscription from the author himself!

Whew! This was a lot of fun putting together. It seems as though we are always putting together a party of some sort. 90th BDay Parties, Sweet 16's, Bridal Showers, Baby Showers, etc. We really like to have lots of fun at our parties. We'll have to show a few more of the really neat ones we've done. You'll have to talk Anjeanette into posting her party from her oldest's BDay party last year. So cute!

Hope you all are enjoying spring as much as we are. This spring I am most excited for our newest family member to join the ranks of our family! I can't wait to get him in my arms and just inhale all of his newness. The one downside to a large and supportive family is that I'll have to wait my turn to get him....I think Papa will be the hardest to get him from! He's already so loved!

Rebecca