She's Ready to Pop Shower

A couple weeks ago I had the great privilege to throw a baby shower for my friend and blogging partner, Betsy. Our friend Katie and I hosted and used the theme "She's Ready to Pop". While I didn't get great pics of the decor, hopefully you can get a feel for the shower. Links to recipes/crafts/ideas below. We set up 3 main areas for the shower: onesie craft, food, and seating/wish card station.

 Instead of playing games during the shower we decided to have everyone make Betsy a onesie. We set up an area in the sun room with stencils (we precut shapes on card stock), onesies in various sizes, short and long sleeve and different colors (we dyed several onesies using Rit), scissors, pencils, fabric backed with Wonder Under, and an iron. Katie made a sign for the table that coordinated with the invitations and food labels. I think you can tell from the pictures that everyone had fun (even people who said they weren't crafty) and it was great to see everyone's ideas come to life.  After the shower I took the onesies home to sew around the edges of the appliqué (by the way- thanks to those of you who added stuff to the front and back :) It actually didn't take long and hopefully will help all the beautiful designs stay on through washings.

For the food we stuck with the Pop theme and served Jalapeño Poppers, Mushroom Poppers, Zucchini Poppers, Oreo and Nutterbutter Truffle Pops (a big favorite- gotta try them!), Fluffy Punch with a Pop of Pink, Popcorn, candy tiers with pop rocks, tootsie pops and bubble gum, popcorn chicken, fruit pops and spinach salad with orange poppyseed dressing.

We also had an area for people to fill out wish cards for the baby and to pick up their favor...a POP of color. We simply tied orange ribbon around nail polish with a little sign that said pop of color.

 We also enjoyed some gift opening. Betsy's mom and grandmother had a neat idea I had not seen before. They took outfits they had saved from Betsy's childhood along with the photo taken of her in the outfit and presented them to her for her little girl. Her grandmother also made a lovely quilt that guests enjoyed looking at during the party.

The hostesses and the guest of honor. We had a great time and hope you know how much we enjoyed doing this for you Betsy.

Shannon

Setting Sail Party

So...where is time going? How has it been 3 weeks since I posted? And why am I just now posting about something that happened in August? Seriously, my life feels a little crazy right now, but I digress, let's move on.

In the summer I was tasked with the planning and decorating of our annual back to school "fun day" for our school staff. Every year we take one day of inservice, and for a few hours, do a team building activity and staff lunch. It is always fun to pick the theme and decide how we are going to pull off a fun time for our staff. However, it has its challenges, as budgets are tight and we have 50 staff members that attend. This year we took the theme of "Enjoying the Journey Together" and spun off the "fun day" activities and lunch to collaborate with the theme. For the activity we had the staff compete in an "Amazing Race". I unfortunately have no pictures of what I created for this :( It was a lot of work, but it was all made easy because of the fabulous blog chicaandjo. Seriously, from templates to clues to running the whole race- they have it all! This was a tremendous life saver and saved me hours upon hours of work. The race was fun...but we didn't leave enough time for it, so we unfortunately had to cut two legs of the race while in the midst of it. We learned to either have lunch first and then take the afternoon for the race or start earlier in the morning.

For the lunch theme we went with "Setting Sail." I first picked the colors of blue, green, and white and went from there. Here are some of things I was able to do with a tight budget using items I had around the house or from the dollar store. Keep in mind the room I had to decorate was less than ideal (a crowded stage with fluorescent lights) and the pictures are from my cell phone.

I purchased blue tablecloths from the dollar store and splurged on wrapping paper for the table runner. I felt so bad that the roll was $12.00 I actually bought it with my own money. I bought one roll which I cut in half to create enough to cover the tables. After the party, I rolled up any paper that was in good shape and it has already been reused to wrap gifts, etc...I am frugal like that :) The paper was from a local party store and it was the perfect shade of green and a modern stripe. I looked everywhere for a more modern paper and this was the best I could do, hence, I spent the money for it! One of my favorite projects were the place cards.

The paper boats were created out of kraft paper I already had at home. Surprisingly it did not take forever to make 50 of these. I followed several tutorials until I figured it out :) Here are the two main ones I used: Martha Stewart & You Tube. After I made the boats I looked around school and found some coffee stir sticks that I could use to hold the pendant name tag which was simply printed on regular printer paper. The silverware was inspired from www.craft-o-maniac.com
I used silverware and green napkins from the dollar store, wrapped them in twine from Walmart (hint: I found cheap twine in the paint/tool area for about a third of the cost as the twine in their craft section). And tied a lifesaver on the outside to look like a life preserver.

 The dessert table backdrop was made with blue kraft paper to cover the white board on the wall followed by some dollar store wrapping paper. The banner was made with burlap and fabric I had at home and my cricut machine to cut out the letters for me to stencil. We simply used small clothespins (again something I already had) to attach the banner to twine. The desserts followed the color them with blue m and m's, green and blue jelly beans, green gummy frogs, white powdered donuts, and the favorite, chocolate dipped oreos- found here: http://www.makoodle.com. The gaps were filled in with two metal planters had from Ikea and green tissue paper. 
Overall the room was nice and festive and didn't look like a school stage. I had fun decorating, just wish I hadn't taken on this task while also moving :) 
Shannon