Baby Shower!

My cute neighbor down the street is expecting her first baby...pretty much any day now! I volunteered to host a baby shower for her for neighbors and church friends last Saturday. I knew she had "work" and "family" baby showers, but good things come in threes, right??
Well, they should!

My next-door-neighbor is the Party QUEEN! She has all the beautiful dishes AND the beautiful ideas! Although I took care of the food, and helped with the decorating, she did most of the real work in the decorating. She has the vision!

My beautiful buffet is the first thing you see when you come in the front door, so that's where we concentrated the cuteness!

On the left side, we filled containers with wooden blocks and Duplo Legos. A plastic dump truck sits on a tiny cake stand....

...On the right side, more Legos (regular size this time), colorful links, baby books, and word art I created on Wordle (I love that site). I had the frame in my "stash," and I gave it a quick coating of red spray paint the day before the party, and then I gave it to the new momma.

We stuck with mostly bright, primary colors. This was dictated by the new onesies strung on twine in front of the buffet. These were part of my gift as well.


My chalkboard got to stay. I wrote "Babies are such a nice way to start people" on it.


Yep, pom-poms! I love pom-poms. I had never made them before, but they were SO EASY! And CHEAP! A 10-sheet package of tissue paper cost $0.99. You can make one big one or four small pom-poms out of a single package? Never made your own pom-poms before? Go see Martha for directions!


The kitchen table was dressed up with some colorful ribbons over top of the tablecloth, and more pom-poms in a glass dish.


The only idea that was truly my own was the garland I made for the window hanging in my kitchen. In keeping with the "onesie" idea, I cut out paper onesies with my Silhouette and letters to spell "Welcome Baby."


I neglected to take very many pictures of the food...I think I was too busy putting it out to think of photographing it! This was a "brunch" shower, so we had a hash-brown casserole, fresh fruit, cinnamon chip biscuits (divine), and blueberry muffins.


Do you see the beautiful drink dispenser on the corner of the counter? There is a funny-but-sad story to go along with it. It also belongs to my neighbor, and a couple of days before the baby shower I borrowed it to go to a couples' dinner party. My assignment was "drink," and the theme was Valentine-y. I made a great raspberry-rhubarb punch, and I cut out vinyl to decorate the outside of the dispenser... it said "Love Potion No. 9" and had hearts all over it! It was super cute...but I never got to take a picture of it, because....

....as I was taking it to the car...I dropped it! Yep, TWO GALLONS of sticky red punch and a million shards of GLASS all over my garage floor! If I hadn't have been so MAD, I would have cried!

I had to send my husband on to the party without me (other commitments to keep), and I spent the next hour pouring gallons of water over my garage floor and sweeping the mess out into the driveway. (And I'm still finding pieces of glass that I missed!)

The worst part was that it wasn't my dispenser that I broke! But thanks to my beloved Amazon, I found and ordered the exact same dispenser that night, and it even came before the baby shower! I'm so glad I was able to replace it.

The baby shower was a lot of fun! But I definitely enjoy throwing parties where someone else comes up with the cute ideas and I get to concentrate on the FOOD!

Oh, and by the way...the whole baby shower cost less than $50, and that included the gift, decorations, paper plates, fruit, etc!