Blue and Brown Baby Shower

Before moving on to the next party, I had to share the results of the beautiful blue and brown themed baby shower that we hosted this weekend for a dear friend.  She's having another boy, so we wanted to do something different and special in the treats and sweets.  We may have gotten carried away, but hopefully it worked.

INVITES:

We had ALOT of ladies to invite to this shower, so we needed to do some quick, easy, and super cute.  So we made a simple invite on cardstock with our blue and brown them in lines.  After printing them out, we tied a small brown ribbon and glued it to the upper right hand corner for a little extra pizzazz. 

 

DECORATIONS:

We kept our blue and brown (and a little white) theme and made an "It's A Boy" banner with cardstock and white ribbon threaded through to allow for it to hang nicely.  Behind the banner we carried the theme with twisted crepe paper along the bannister railings in alternate blue and brown.  Above the banner and through out the room, we hung tissue paper balls in the alternating colors.

When I went to buy a tablecloth, I couldn't find anything I really liked, so I quickly sewed blue and brown fabric together to make easy, large stripes.  It turned out really cute!  On the table we put confetti that I found at Hobby Lobby with little "It's A Boy" , Umbrellas, and brown dots in it --it was perfect for the shower.  My co-host found some matching plates and cups at Kroger that worked perfect.  And to place the utensils in, we cut a 2 inch strip of blue paper with little baby feet to surround a large glass vase.

Since we planned for so many people, we made little circle stickers out of scraps that we had left over from the favors so guests could write their names on them and stick them to the cups.  We had a little problem since I'd used cardstock and the stickers didn't want to bend so well.  I ended up just putting mine on the bottom of my cup. 

We didn't get around to purchasing balloons, so we let the "little decorators" help by tying crepe paper to the mail box so that guests would know which house to come to.  It wasn't done quite as I envisioned it, but they had a good time and worked together without too much arguing to get it done.  And it really does make me SMILE everytime I see it.

FAVORS:

I guess I get a little carried away when it comes to the favors.  I just really wanted the "mom to be" to have something a little different.  So we made a few different types and scattered them throughout the table and room.

We had to have the colors in the scheme in M&Ms.  That was without question.  We don't have a place in town close to me that carries the colored M&Ms, but I was fortunate to have some baby blue colored candies from my family's candy store that I had brought home with me the last time I'd gone down.  Then we went and bought a regular bag of candy and sorted through them to get some brown and blue to add to the mixture.  May have not been the most cost effective way to have done this, but it gave us extra M&Ms for the next time we have a get together.

Our "Jr. Decorators" joined in the fun and made some yummy baby pacifiers from lifesavers and jelly bellies.  They made them in the alternating colors with long string to have each guest wear during the baby shower.  They turned out so cute and we had more than one or two eaten during the party.

We really had a sweet theme going, so we took assorted colored blue and brown papers and wrapped fun size Hershey bars.  We really found some cute stuff at Hobby Lobby with plaid, baby feet, stars, and other designs.  I probably should have personalized a few, but we went crazy with the Hershey kisses, so I didn't feel too bad.

This was the first time I'd done the kisses and I have to tell you how totally excited I was in how they turned out!  I went and grabbed a few pictures of my friend and her family from facebook and then took various "It's A Boy" graphics and added them to small stickers which we put on the bottom of the kisses.  SO CUTE!!

FOOD:

We had our shower in the middle of the day, so we decided to spend most of the time talking and eating.  So we had a lot of food.  Many of the ladies love our "mom to be" so much that they offered to bring food to help out. 

We ended up having chicken salad and ham and cheese sandwiches on croissants. (YUM! Never had tried that before, but definite YUM!)  We also had several salads, fruit and veggie trays, and lots of good stuff all around.  To drink, we had water and our 7-Up/Apple Juice mixture.

Our good friend made the cake for the shower.  We are so fortunate to have had her be still in town, and will miss her INCREDIBLY when she's gone....(and not just for all you do!)  She made a beautiful blue cake with brown polka-dots all over the cake.  It was almost too pretty to eat....ALMOST.

Our 'mom to be' LOVES lemon treats, so we made Lemon Cheesecakes in individual cupcake liners.  To dress it up, we added cupcake toppers in our theme colors and placed it on a white dessert tower.  Not many of them got eaten-- I think we just had TOO much food, but I am thrilled to have them as leftovers!

It turned out to be a super cute party with lots of fun, food, and friends.  Definitly a DO-AGAIN!  Thanks everyone for coming and celebrating the New Addition to our lives.

Family, Fun, Food, & Fireworks -- A Patriotic Party

So this week's party is one that's close to home.  I'm actually going to have most of my family in town (all 21 of us) for the 4th of July.  So we're going to get together with them and a few of my closest friends (for a total of 75 people) for a holiday BBQ, fireworks party, and Birthday for my soon-to-be 6 year old son "Z".  So I've spent ALOT of time thinking about how to make this a great party, and hopefully I've succeeded.  If you see a problem, or better way of doing something, PLEASE let me know!

Invitations:

I made some really cute invites for this party.  I printed out the party inforatmion on plain white cardstock, which I then ran through my Craft Robo to cut multi-sized stars on the top left and bottom right.  I glued the cardstock to some cute blue and white starred patriotic pattern paper that I found at Jo-anns.  This shows the blue pattern paper on the sides and through the cut-outs in the paper.  Doesn't it create a fun look?  Then I brought in the color red by gluing the whole invite to a slightly larger piece of red cardstock.  I may be a bit biased, but I think they turned out really cute.


Decorating

This party will be held outside at a pavillion and softball field at my hubby's workplace.  So we're praying for good weather so I can decorate to my heart's content.  This pavillion has wooden support posts around the outside edges.  I plan to create red, white, and blue pennants from cardstock to hang in a double-tiered around the pavillion using the posts as a swag point.

For the head table with the food, I'm going to use a red plastic tablecloth with a blue and white fabric runner down the center.  I'm giong to get 5 yards of blue patriotic fabric and cut it down the center lengthwise.  Since it's so windy here some days, I'm going to use double sided tape to tape the runner down and some picnic table clips for the main tablecloth.  The other half of the fabric will be used to make a matching cover and runner for the dessert table.

The picnic tables we'll eat at will have white butcher paper table cloths.  I'll put a centerpiece of a cute Red, White, or Blue bucket like Simply Creative Insanity has here or a large recycled can with patriotic paper with crayons on it.  This way the kids can color on it while they wait for their food or for their parents to eat.  I'm also trying to find some wooden stars that I can paint to add a little punch to the bucket centerpiece.

The silverware will be on the main food table inside matching centerpiece buckets or paper covered recycled cans.  I think I'll put some river rock gems in the bottoms so the wind son't blow the cans/buckets over.  The plates and napkins will be also patriotic colors and sit beside the white silverware.

The dessert table will be decked out in the same red tablecloth and fabric runner as the food table.  In the center of the table will be a large cupcake with 6 candles for "Z"s birthday portion of the party.  To each side of the cupcake will be over 100 cupcakes on a large cupcake holder that I found at Jo-anns.  They are a plain white, which will set off all the holiday colors and designs on the cupcakes themselve.  Then, we'll scatter other desserts around the table.

Food

It will be a classic potluck style BBQ with meats, salads, and treats.  Since I have so much family to add to the mix, we're going to bring alot of food.  We'll bring our family favorite of "Pink Salad", corn on the cob for all the guests (someone find me a good sale!), Sam's Club's yummy potato salad, and hopefully we can figure out a way to bring my hubby's buttery, greasy, yummy, tasty cubed potatoes.  We'll see what the other guests bring to add to the yum!

For dessert, we'll have 1 Large cupcake and over 100 small cupcakes.  The small cupcakes will have a variety of toppers on them.  We'll have everthing from Inchmark's cute sugar cookies stars, to pinwheels, to the patriotic cupcake toppers I shared yesterday.  My son is so excited to start baking already!

We'll also have bowls of Red, White, and Blue M&Ms in both plain and peanut, a cut up Watermelon,  oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (another family favorite), and an apple pie.  What's more American than that?  To top it off, I'm going to find a large bucket and fill it with ice and popcicles. 

We should have enough food to overeat and stuff ourselves just as the founding fathers would have wanted!


Games:

To start the party off and give the kids something to do while the meat cooks and everyone arrives, I'm going to do a craft with them.  I wanted to do something that would allow my kids to have a souvenier for this fun day with their cousins and friends.  So originally I wanted to do t-shirts like this and this.  But I realized the cost and mess factore where way out of my control.  So instead, I refined an activity that I had wanted to do last year when my family got together--necklaces.

I bought a bunch of stretchy necklaces where I wanted to add a phone number on them so incase the kids got lost at any of the theme parks or activities we did, someone could call us.  Well, I never could quite make it work in time for last year's reunion, since no one makes affordable numbers on beads big enough to gon on the necklaces that I bought.  This year, I have a new laser printer.  So I have drilled holes in small wooden circles from Hobby Lobby.  I'll let the kids paint and decorate the front and I'll put a sticker on the back with contact information.  I'll go ahead and seal them with modge podge just in case.  Then the kids can decorate the necklaces with pony beads in different colors and shapes.

Hopefully, they'll be done about the time the food is too.  After dinner, I'll let the adults sit, talk, and settle their stomachs.  The kids can play with a variety of items I'll bring-- a football, basketball, volleyball, frisbee, ring toss, and lawn golf.

Once we have settled, I'm going to put everyone's name in 2 jars.  One for kids 10 and older and one for kids 9 and under.  Two team captains will draw a name from each of the jars.  This will set up the teams--hopefully evenly and fairly for a fun game of Kickball.  We had such a good time playing this for FHE a few weeks ago that I'm sure we'll all enjoy the game.

When the game is over, we'll meet back for cake and ice cream for "Z".  Since his actual birthday isn't until 3 weeks later, we'll give him one big present that all his cousins can play with while they are visiting.

My Sister-In-Law has a desire to see fireflies while she's here, so we'll take glass Ball jars and go firefly hunging for 1/2 hour while the men prepare for the "big show."  I LOVE Family Fun's idea of the firefly party and had to incorporate it into our evening.

It should be getting dark by then and so we'll do sparklers for the kids and pop Jiffy Pop popcorn for families to enjoy during the show.  I'll make these patriotic treat holders from Martha Stewart for the popcorn so everyone can have their own "bowl".  Then, it's time for our own fireworks show!  We've done this for the past few years and have really enjoyed being able to have a private showing.  I can't wait to share the fun with family too!

Favors:

The kids will each have their own necklaces to take home and I'm going to make these Family Fun Festive Fans for the adults to use during the party if it gets hot.  They are so patriotic looking and handy to have!

I'll also have some of these boxes done up as cupcake holders so we can send home any of the leftover cupcakes with friends.  We can't take them since we'll be busy parting all week.  And how can you have a night party without glow in the dark necklaces?  It's un-American!  So we'll definitly be making a trip to Oriental Trading for some extra light to add to our night!

So what do you think?  I think it should be a fun, festive, sparkly night!