After weeks of planning and preparing it showered this weekend at my house! I don’t do well with surprises. It makes me completely anxious and stressed so I knew about the big day and even helped with details. Saturday morning I took off to get my hair done while my Mom, MIL, sisters and SIL’s got to work on the decor.
Welcome to the party:
{We used some of the elephants from my living room to place some balloons to alert party guests where the party was.}
To the tent:
{We were able to get a steal of fabric from Duralee’s outlet so we had custom tablecloths and napkins due to my MIL’s seamstress skills.}
Celebrate the Peanut centerpieces:
{Originally we were going to do glass cubes for the flower centerpieces and place a smaller cube in a larger cube in order to fill the middle with peanuts. Well that didn’t work out as planned. 2 weeks ago we realized we needed a plan B. Christmas Tree Shop to the rescue with these cute striped palls. As an interior decorator I have a resale license so I was able to place an order for flowers at a wholesaler and then spent Friday afternoon putting together all of the centerpieces. We still wanted to keep with the peanut theme so Jon thought of the idea of sprinkling them on the table.}
Close up of centerpiece:
{We went bright and happy with our color story for the shower. So for our centerpieces we went with mini orange roses, cotton candy pink carnations, green mini mums, yellow dahlias and white hydrangeas. }
Meal Time:
{We had custom menu’s designed by the lovely Mattie at Puddleduck Designs}
Since the tent in the backyard was only 20 x 20 we had our own personal canopy set up on our drive way and that is where the food & drink tables were laid out.
Close up of our appetizers:
{How cute is that crudite display! I munched on it all day. I think guests thought it was simply too pretty to eat, because I was left with tons of leftovers. }
We went with a signature drink for the party and decided to use Eddie Ross’s No Fail Sangria recipe and it was a hit!
{We purchased mason jars to use for the sangria and then as a party favor for guests along with striped straws from Shop Sweet Lulu and all of the printable paper accessories like food tents, bingo cards, water bottle labels, straw flags were all done by the very talented Meghan from When I grow up…}
Close up:
{Check out my elephant ring. Little elephant details were all throughout the shower.}
Water bottle labels:
{Water bottle labels designed by Meghan and placed in another find from Christmas Tree Shop. They had cute hat boxes in bright colors that we went to be used for gift wrapping, but we used them for display purposes throughout the shower.}
Activities: We wanted to have something to entertain guests at the party so we went with a onesie and bib decorating station. I didn’t want to overwhelm guests with paints and didn’t love the look of fabric markers so we used fabric instead. I went through my fabric closet and then also picked up fabric squares and JoAnn’s and ironed on Heat ‘n Bond Ultra Iron On Adhesive roll to all of the fabric. Guests could then use stencils we provided or cut something free hand and remove paper packing and then lightly iron for 8 seconds to set fabric.
People loved this idea and we got so many chic onesies and bibs made that look like something out of etsy.
Jon’s sister got the ball rolling with this cute bow tie onesie:
Half way through the party we had a nice collection going on:
Baby Pavone is going to have a posse of ladies around him at all time. Check out his aunts that worked their little butts off getting everything prepared for the shower:
Gift time!
{How cute is this diaper cake. When I first stopped it I assumed someone purchased it a store already done up. Later on though I found out that my sisters had made it themselves. I loved all of the orange, elephants and monkeys. So cute! }
We played a little Baby Shower Bingo to make the gift opening process a little more fun.
{Bingo cards designed by Meghan}
Jon originally was going to head out and run some errands during the shower and then return during the end, but he ended up staying the whole time instead and it was great. He got to mingle with the guests, help with setting out food and took part in opening the gifts.
The crowd loved him. His favorite gift had to be My Breast Friend:
In between opening gifts we had a little lunch. We went with an assortment of Panini’s and pasta salads:
We did a huge dessert spread:
{We had Funfetti cupcakes, Smore’s bars, Lemon Bars, Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies, Rainbow Cookie cupcakes, Elephant shaped lemon iced cookies, and a DIY Smore’s station with traditional and extra large marshmallows, 3 different types of graham crackers and 10 different types of chocolate to pick from. Yum!}
We have a fire pit in our backyard and some extra long marshmallow skewers so Jon became the marshmallow roaster and helped guests make their custom Smore’s.
Jon and I had a lovely time and were so thankful for both of our Mom’s for hosting the shower.
It was so nice to be surrounded by such love and we know this little boy arriving in December is going to be one lucky guy.
Before we knew it the hours had pasted and it was time to bring in all of the gifts:
A big thank you to everyone that helped with the shower from the talented ladies that helped with my paper goods to all of the lovely ladies in our family that helped host/plan/prep/produce the shower.
Whew what a long post. By the end of the evening we were all wiped:
I hope you all had a lovely weekend as well!
