a “berry sweet” afternoon indeed

helping to plan the old lady’s baby shower was so much fun because it was being thrown by rock-ell and the bean.  rock-ell had a lot of great ideas, and with the mommy-to-be’s stamp of approval on the “berry sweet” strawberries theme, we went to town on figuring out all the party details.

i was more than happy to provide the cookies for the favors, of course.

for the centerpieces, the old man’s mom volunteered to assemble little berry baskets filled with flowers.  the vision involved placing three of those baskets on each table and then using tall clear vases filled with those clear water beads and fake strawberries.  the beads would give the illusion of the berries floating in air.  we managed to find some at michaels to do a test run and see if it would actually work (it did), and then ordered more beads in bulk from amazon.  when they arrived, the beads were tiny - smaller than a grain of rice - and the instructions said to hydrate small amounts of them in a gallon of water.

i knew we needed at least ten vases of them and really had no idea how many beads we’d need, so i just kind of winged it and filled a bunch of random containers.

it didn’t take very long for those beads to suck up the water and expand to their full size, and i definitely ended up with far more beads than we needed.  oops.

but we were super excited when we assembled a sample and added some childhood photos of the parents-to-be.  it turned out pretty much exactly as we’d been picturing, so yay!

no special occasion is complete without a cake from our favorite bakery.  look how cute it turned out:

walgreens to the rescue for the welcome sign that we placed at the entrance.

i’d seen an ad somewhere for a really cute guest book idea - they send you an OG rotary phone to place on a table.  guests pick up the handset, wait for the tone, leave a voice mail message and then hang up.  after the party, you send the phone back and the company transfers those messages onto a flash drive, with an option to have them pressed onto a vinyl record.  super cute, right?

there was a table to collect diapers that guests brought for the diaper raffle.

and we’d had a fun outing to l.a. earlier in the week to pick out candy in bulk for the candy bar.  because is it a party without a candy bar?  i think not.

the gift table was set up nearby.

and next to that, the balloon arch and backdrop.  gotta have a photo op, amirite?

we’d printed out all of the materials for the games we were going to play, and to save time we went ahead and placed it all at each table setting along with a cute pink pen and the cookie favors.

with a good amount of time to spare, we finished the setup and the mommy-to-be finally got to see it all.  i knew she was probably feeling some anxiety because she’s really not one for being the center of attention.  she’d opted for a co-ed shower though, so at least the old man would be there to take some of the pressure off.  she was more than happy to share the spotlight with him.

guests started arriving not too long after that, and it was nice to see everyone come out to celebrate the new family.  i was happy that i’d been allowed to invite my friends, who are all super excited to be aunties.  or maybe they’re grannies, heh.

i was super amused watching everyone play the silly games we’d set up, and my friend trish absolutely dominated the candy bar diaper game, winning a gift card to taco bell.

even funnier was the blindfolded diapering game.  it was total madness in there.

and then in an effort to keep everyone interested during the typically boring gift opening segment of the party, we put out baby shower bingo cards to play.  

it was a really lovely party, and they received lots of awesome, useful gifts for the little miss.  we’re so grateful to everyone for coming out to celebrate with us, and for their generosity and thoughtfulness.