The "Melib" of Melibindsay got together to throw a baby shower for the "indsay", as she is now less than 6 weeks from her due date! (which is Leap Day. Wouldn't that be awesome?!) We had tons of fun planning it! The theme? Alphabet.
Here are the invites I designed just using Pages (one day I'll learn Photoshop... not today) and I printed them on the back side of different cute papers. We went for the obvious color- pink (with gray accents).
We put balloons on Mel's balcony to help people figure out which apartment to go to. (I also included a map which I drew in Pages as well, but you don't get to see that. It was cute though :D) Thanks, Mel, for hosting! It was so nice not to have to clean my whole house AND make tons of food (because a clean house and tons of cooking never go hand-in-hand for me) :)
We labeled the food "Ww is for Water" etc.
The mini pies were actually really easy. I used
my favorite pie crust recipe, and
this filling recipe, using the frozen berry medley from Costco. The cupcakes were ones I had been wanting to try since I saw them
here. I admit, though, I used a boxed cake mix- I was doing so much from scratch, I scrimped there, but everyone still raved about them.
I used
this recipe for the Chicken Salad, which doesn't it look so pretty with those red grapes, green celery and brown cashews? I made the shredded chicken ahead of time with
this easy crock-pot recipe- which I love to use and then take the leftover juices and blend them with the veggies and use it for stock in other recipes. The croissants were from Costco, although I would love to someday try and make croissants. If they're that good from Costco, imagine how amazing they would be fresh!! Anyone have a good recipe?
Costco roses- one day I'll take flower arranging at BYU, but for now, I just have to rely on the flowers to speak for themselves :)
Mixed, fresh berries, veggie platter,
Mel threw together a spinach, crasin, feta salad with walnuts on the side (since Lindsay's mom is allergic to nuts) and two dressings to choose from.
I used my silhouette to cut out letters from the alphabet and then I sewed them together. The sewed doily garland was reused from
this shower. The "table cloth" is a queen, fitted gray sheet :)
To go with the alphabet theme, our prizes were little notebooks with a pen.
And our party favor was 3 sugar cookies with "A", "B", and "C" piped on. If we had to do it again, we would have put A on a small cookie, B on a medium and C on a large round one since we had to stack them to get them to fit in the cellophane bag. We originally wanted to have cookies cut out to be like the letters "A", "B", and "C", but it was really hard to find the letters we want. Walmart and every chain craft store sells the same 101 cookie cutter set with the alphabet in it, but the letters are puny, so we had to improvise.
We played 3 games: This one is called "My water broke"! (every baby shower needs at least one gross game, right?) Everyone had to keep an eye on their cup throughout the shower and whoever's
creepy baby emerges from the ice cube first had to yell "My water broke!"
Yay Kellie!
Our next game, was like baby/pregnancy/labor-terms scattergories, except we had Lindsay come up with a list of terms for each letter of the alphabet previously, and people would get a point if they chose the same term she did. We ended up with a 5-way tie at 5 points and so gave the prize to whomever had filled in the most answers.
Yay, Kelsey!
Our last game was called "Makin' a baby" and everyone had to mold a baby from play dough. Lindsay got to choose her favorite.
Linds wanted to make one, even though she wasn't allowed to choose her own :)
Kate won, though accidentally knocked the head off right before the picture so she's holding it on here :) (did anyone else notice the name of everyone who won started with "K"?)
The haul.
I felt like people were very generous. Linds got some great loot!
Here she is trying on the nursing cover I made her :) I also made a carseat cover, which I'll post separately.
Here's a pic of some of the old ballet girls.
And here's Melibindsay.
And finally, I want to make a shout out to an amazingly supportive husband who came home after work last Friday to a hurricane house, full of piles of clean laundry needing folding, migrant toys, a nice pile of dirty dishes, and a lame-o dinner to greet him (since I was in the kitchen all day doing shower prep). I then ran off to Melissa's to put food together (with all said things still in place) and when I returned after midnight, he not only waited up for me, but had folded all the laundry and put it away, emptied the dishwasher, loaded it up and washed it all and put all the toys away. (aaaand put the kids to bed by himself) If that's not enough, I ran off Saturday morning, leaving him in a similar situation, and he watched the kids all day while I was at the shower, cleaned up the cupcake mess I left in the morning and didn't complain that I was too tired to make dinner when I got home. (thank you Chinese take-out).
My man is THE. BEST. I love you, Jay.
I got the recipe for raspberry lemonade punch from Martha and I think I had more comments about how good this was than anything else. I used pink lemonade powder, instead of regular, and I think it was a good move. Also, notice my paper circle garland, draped all over the table. A simple but cute touch- which is why I copied it from some other blog...
I decided to turn my triple-layer coconut cake with lemon curd and cream cheese frosting into mini-cupcakes, and I think the result was well received.
My neighbor last minute offered to make some pull-apart cheese bread, for which I am extremely grateful. I had planned to make these before I talked to her, but I'm not sure when I would have had time to do it and have them still taste fresh. I'd still like to try them sometime. They look so cute! I also served strawberries, fresh pineapple, watermelon and cantaloupe balls, brownie bites and cream puffs (both from Costco) and lemon-lime water.
Here's Maren with some of the goods :) It was so fun to see all the cute baby girl things, for me especially because I haven't bought anything yet. It will be really hard to restrain myself, I think.
There was another little boy, about The Frog's same age, who came (same name as The Frog!) and when The Frog saw him, his first impulse was to give him a hug. This picture was captured just after the hug and just before the huggee broke down into tears.
Here we are, preggo together, bellies touching :) 
