Homemakin and Decoratin: Party/Hosting Ideas

I meant to post photos from our Gender Reveal party months and months ago, and I just remembered!

We had planned to do the party at a really pretty park in town, but the weather just didn't cooperate with us, so we set it up downstairs in our church dining room.

So here are all the lovely pictures from our party that day! ... Beware- LOTS of photos! : )

First, here are the invitations that I created on Picmonkey.com. I found my inspiration while browsing through Pinterest. I was able to find clip art on Google to save and insert to Picmonkey.

{obviously we weren't able to do the party at the park.. bummer}

I planned and prepared pretty much everything for the party myself. Of course I got many of my ideas from Pinterest! Like the banner over the food table. That idea came from this banner, which is originally found on Etsy. I didn't have any burlap material, but I had some tan-ish fabric. I hand painted each of the letters and hearts, then hot glued the triangles to a ling of twine. I LOVE how it turned out!

I really enjoy when I'm able to put together a special party and I have SO. MUCH. FUN with all the little details! I'm totally a "detail" person when it comes to planning these kinds of things!

For the drinks I just bought a big container of powered lemonade and added Koolaid packets to make the colors blue and pink. Blue raspberry Koolaid and Cherry Koolaid. The blue needed a little help, so we added some blue food coloring. I made labels for the drink dispensers with kraft paper and twine.

To raise the drink dispensers, I brought my two largest pots from home and turned them upside down to make little stands and covered them with fabric. I had the pink and blue fabric already in my fabric stash, so that worked out perfect!

The little heart banner is made from kraft paper and my super cool paper heart punch!

I kept the food and treats pretty simple so I wouldn't be overwhelming myself with all the prepping.

Pink Bow and Blue Mustache sugar cookies!

I bought the mustache cookie cutter from Etsy and the bow cookie cutter came from Ebay.

I made the sugar cookies a couple weeks before the party and just froze them until the day before the party so I could frost them. Normally I use royal icing, but I decided to try a butter cream frosting this time and I am SO glad I did! It was SO much better than royal icing could EVER be! I will never make sugar cookies with royal icing again, they were soooo delicious! I just colored the butter cream frosting with food coloring.

Aren't they just ADORABLE?!

Rice Krispie treats dipped in pink and blue colored chocolate

Mini pretzels dipped in blue and pink chocolate

CUPCAKES!!!

Okay, these were not anything special. I wanted to use cupcakes as our way to reveal the gender. I didn't make them, but I supplied everything to this local teenage girl I found through our online classifieds in town. I paid her to make our cupcakes and insert the color (pink or blue) into the middle of the cupcakes and then frost them. I have this little cupcake corer thing I got from Ebay that worked perfect. When I went to pick the cupcakes up from her she had turned my white top frosting green and yellow!!! AAHH! So being the picky person I am, I went home and as carefully as I could, I scraped off the yellow and green and refrosted most of the cupcakes. I just did enough to look good on the table, and brought the rest of the yellow and green ones in case we ran out.

I made my own cupcakes toppers using my heart punch, craft paint, and toothpicks.

I got the idea to dye the edges of the cupcake liners from this post.

Pretty blue and pink striped paper straws from Etsy.

I love Mason jars, so of course I decorated some with twine to hold the straws.

Baby's ultrasound photo framed was a nice decoration for the table! And of course I love adding some cuteness with Scrabble tiles : )

Everybody got to wear a felt pin to show their vote. Pink bows and black mustaches. I got my inspiration to make them from here!

The chalkboard is just some cardboard painted with chalkboard paint. And I found the little boy and girl clip art from searching Google. I fell in love with the framed little boy and girl clip art idea after seeing this gender reveal party.

We gave an "Old Wive's Tale" quiz before finding out the gender. You can find the printable quiz here.

After we gave the quiz and the answers, I went through the list and told which ones applied to me.. just for fun in case that changed anyone's vote!

We also took some team pictures with signs I made before finding out the gender.

I had been thinking "boy" for quite a while ..

Hubby had been thinking "girl" ..

But I was right!! : )

B. O. Y !

Such a fun party! Loved it!

Check out my "Gender Reveal Ideas" board on Pinterest for more fun ideas!

Also, come check me out on my other blog, Bumping into Style, where I share my maternity outfit endeavors (or "attempts" .. ) and little tid bits of my pregnancy progress! I am currently in week 34!

I threw my first baby shower ever a few weeks ago! My little sister is having a baby girl and my sister is one of my dearest and best friends. I wanted to make this shower so special for her to remember. I pretty much started planning for this 3 to 4 months before going out to California for Christmas. I wanted everything to be planned out and all the decorations to be ready so we wouldn't have to do so much running around and shopping, taking away our visiting time since we only had 2 weeks of vacation with my family. Alot of the things for the shower were made and put together by me, giving it a super sweet and personal touch.. I like to think so anyway!
{MONTHS ago I was inspired by this baby shower and fell in love with the idea!}

So without further ado, here are photos of the shower.

WARNING: this may be a looong post with lots of photos! :)

First things first, here are the invitations I designed on my computer and printed at home.

I thought they were just PERFECT!

The dessert table was probably the most exciting part to put together!

You can hardly see the tissue paper clouds I made with paper raindrops hanging down. To make the raindrops I just cut heart shapes and folded them in half.

All the tissue paper came from the dollar store, along with any cardstock I used too!

See the cute mini pom pom garland along the table? Found little bags of mini pom poms at the dollar store and strung them on thread and hot glued the garland right to the plastic tablecloth!

French Vanilla cupcakes with pretty blue frosting YUM. The edible pearl candies give the cupcakes such a girly touch. For the cupcake toppers I bought the paper cloud cut outs from Etsy for like $3 and taped toothpicks to the backs.

Aren't these raindrop sugar cookies the darling-est things!? I made my own cookie cutter to get the raindrop shape! (cardboard, hot glue and aluminum foil). The cookies were a HIT! {everyone keeps asking for the recipe!}

Chocolate and Spice cake balls. YUM YUM YUM my favorite!

{I seriously spent a whole 2 days baking and making the desserts! Mom helped me too}

With dollar store glass plates and thrifted milk glass vases, I made the two cake stands.

SO SIMPLE! {hot glue!} The two vases aren't matching, which is super cute.

Mom put together a super yummy nut, mint, and chocolate raisins mix.
I pretty much munched on it the whole time!

Chocolate covered pretzel sticks that I dipped myself. SO GOOD!
And they are just so pretty!

The oversized wine glasses came from the dollar store. There are two different kinds of wine glasses to vary the look a tiny bit.. which was probably not even noticeable.

The baby's name is Kyra (sounds like Kierra or Keera)
I cut out large letters from cardboard spelling out her name and wrapped them with two colors of blue yarn. Super cute, ya?!

Blue and white napkins from the dollar store, hand stamped with my umbrella stamp from Michael's dollar bins. White ink on the blue, and blue ink on the white ones! I pretty much adored this little detail!

"Baby Girl" wooden letters came from AC Moore for $.49 cents a piece.
Mom painted them pink and it added just enough pink on the table!

These silver frames used for dessert labels were from Michael's dollar bins as well.
LOVE' EM!

The pretty blue table runner came from a thrift store near my parents house. My mom and I were out one day together checking out some thrift stores for fun and I randomly found a big bundle of this fabric for $2! It was the PERFECT color! So I cut two strips from the fabric and mom sewed the ends together to make this shabby little runner.. no hemming or perfect finishing! You couldn't even tell. The table just wouldn't have been the same without that blue fabric! There was enough to use on the drink table too!

My mom had these BEAUTIFUL glass drink dispensers that we filled with lemonade and lemon slices (I hadn't put the lemon slices in yet so you can't see them!). I also made ice cubes from the lemonade so it wouldn't get watered down.

Probably the most expensive part of this shower was purchasing all the glass baby bottles. But they are the sweetest thing! Everyone just loved it. And the pretty paper straws came from Etsy!

Here's the mommy-to-be sipping from her pretty baby bottle!
Isn't she just the most adorable pregnant lady?!

The "Guest Book" was so super cute! I've seen wedding guest book ideas where people leave their thumb print to form a tree, and so I thought it would be perfect to use that same idea with a rainshower theme! The umbrella shape was just cut from cardstock and I drew the handle with a marker.

I searched for a blue or white umbrella EVERYWHERE, and couldn't find one. Finally a couple days before the shower I was standing in line to buy some things at the 99 cent store and after I bought my stuff and was about to walk away I noticed these light blue umbrellas sitting on the counter right next to me! It was the craziest thing ever I tell you!

As each guest arrived, I gave them a tiny felted diaper broach pin that I made.
This was for the Dirty Diaper game. I had a tiny piece of chocolate inside one of them.

We played the baby photo guessing game.
I had guest who brought their baby photos hang them up on a string of twine with numbered mini clothespins.

And I made these cute cards for writing down the answers.
I printed the game title and numbers on cardstock, used my corner punch, and used my umbrella stamp and heart punch to embellish.

We played "guess the mommy's tummy size" with yarn

And the game "Left, Right" where you read a story and every time your hear "right" or "left" you pass around a wrapped gift in that direction- super fun and funny too!

We also played a game called "My Water Broke!"

You freeze little plastic babies in ice cubes {which looked totally creepy by the way!} and give one to each guest in a little cup, and whoever's ice cube is completely melted {you can blow on the cube or keep your hands around the cup to warm it} and yells "my water broke" first is the winner... One of my sister's best friends who is also pregnant and due to pop any day was the winner! So when we heard her shout out "MY WATER BROKE!" .. we were a little concerned!

I set up a photo booth in a cozy little cubby hole in the kitchen
{a fridge is supposed to go there but my parents' fridge is too big}

The "Photo Booth" sign is a dollar store plastic tray that I painted with chalk board paint.

Found those little yellow rain boots at the thrift store for $1.99. So adorable!
I made the mustache, lips and heart photo props.
I found wooden heart shapes at Michael's and painted them with chalkboard paint. I love chalkboard paint. The picture frame was thrifted and we spray painted it yellow.

I just loved how the photo booth turned out.
And it was actually more of a hit than I expected it to be!

Two pregnant mommy bellies SO CUTE!

SO MUCH FUN! My favorite props were the mustaches and frame.

Here are some sweet shots of mommy and daddy-to be before the party

I love that darling little baby belly!

My sister love and me having some fun
{yes, I know.. I can't spell}

Take home favors were little baggies of lemon drops.
I bought the little ziplock baggies from the dollar store, made the labels from leftover blue cardstock paper, printed outlines of cloud shapes and cut them out, stamped with a "thank you" stamp. Then I just attached the labels to the baggies with double sided tape.