It's a Baby Shower!

It has certainly been a while since my last post! This one is a special edition post in honor of my twin sister's baby shower! A while back when I had mentioned that I was in charge of planning it in a Random Tuesday Thoughts post, Stacy from Stacy Uncorked had requested that I show photos from the shower. I promised to share them, so here they are!

My sister provided us with a color inspiration for the baby's nursery, so everything for the baby shower was pulled from this "inspiration board":

 

My first project for the shower were the invitations. I knew that I wanted to make them myself because as an unemployed teacher, really, what else do I have to do with my time? It's not as though I have children to take care of or anything. ;-) Here are the invitations, or at least part of them, anyway. I didn't want to share a photo of the actual inside invite because it has all of my personal info printed on it, and I'm feeling too lazy right now to black it all out.

Front of the outside. (Yes, the yellow strips were hand woven through the doily).

Back of the outside.

I found the idea for the outside doily envelope from Martha Stewart and from Martha Stewart Weddings. I also came across Ruffled, a wedding planning blog that demonstrates making these same envelopes. Amanda provides excellent step-by-step directions on how to make these, so I won't attempt to myself. I purchased these square doilies from Mary Jean Online, the ONLY place I have been able to find 10-inch square doilies! The doily envelopes folded open to reveal a white invitation with two daisies on it.

I decided to torture myself by making my own tissue paper poms. These things can sell for $4-$5 apiece on Etsy, so I certainly wasn't purchasing any! I found directions online, again from Martha Stewart Weddings, and let me tell you something. They certainly make these things look a lot easier in the directions than they are in real life! Although it would probably be a big help to have sharp scissors on hand for this project! I made a total of five of these things, three white, one yellow, and one blue. I like how they turned out, but boy, oh boy, was it a struggle getting to the end result! These were probably the most difficult of my DIY projects.

My third project for the shower was to make a doily and bluebird garland to decorate the front of my fireplace, the gift table, and above the dessert table. This idea came from my own mind:

(Dessert table not fully stocked yet).

I made an "It's a girl!" banner, also coordinating with the invitations and garland and my own idea.

And as seen in the above dessert table photo, I made coordinating cupcake wrappers.

They were really simple to make using a 10-inch round doily. One doily yields three wrappers. Here they are on the cupcakes:

Speaking of cupcakes, I made two different types of cupcakes. My sister has been craving a lot of fruit during her pregnancy, so she wanted to make sure that we had a lot of fruit-themed items on the menu (along with sour gummy worms as seen above!) The first cupcakes I made were dark chocolate raspberry with white chocolate butter cream frosting and raspberry truffles:

These poor raspberries were smooshed in their container.

I found the cupcake recipe from The Busty Baker. An added bonus with these cupcakes was that they don't use any eggs, (my sister is allergic to them). However, after making them the day before, they were a tad on the dry side by the time we served them at the shower. I didn't use the frosting recipe provided with these cupcakes. I cannot remember where the recipe I used came from, but it was rather too sweet and "white chocolate-y" for my personal taste. The idea for the raspberry truffles came from Annie's Eats.

The second cupcake I made was strawberry shortcake with vanilla butter cream.

This cupcake recipe came from Teeana over at Spork or Foon. Personally, I think that these cupcakes were awesome! They were denser than a typical cupcake, which is understandable since they are supposed to be "shortcake" cupcakes. The vanilla butter cream recipe that I used came from Life's Ambrosia.

My step-sister and I also put our collaborative efforts to work creating two fruit bouquets, (she skewered and I arranged). I think they came out pretty well.

I see you little gummy worms!

My mom and my step-sister worked together on the favors for the shower. It was originally on my To-Do list, but I found that there were too many items already on it and passed along the responsibility to them. I think that they did a pretty nice job.

I came across the idea of "Bun in the Oven" muffin mix bags while perusing ABC Favors for ideas (Note: It doesn't appear as though they offer these items anymore. I cannot find them when I click on the "Muffin Mix" link). I found the labels at Storkie.com. These were so great because they can be completely personalized to match the shower colors and Mommy-to-Be. You can change the color of the woman's hair, skin tone, the outfit she is wearing, accessories, and the color of the background. Here is what ours ended up looking like:

Overall, I think that we did a really great job. I know that my sister was really happy with how the shower turned out, and I suppose that is what matters most.