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.