Baby Shower

Well I survived the past week and weekend and am now home from Albuquerque ready to take on my next projects.  Another Front Porch Kit is due to be released on May 15th and I still have a few more projects to finish.

Dana's baby shower was lots of fun on Sunday. It was a couples shower (which I've never been to) and we had quite a crowd.  Dana and John are world travelers - they just returned last weekend from two weeks in Paris and France - and they are decorating the nursery in a travel theme, so we went with that  theme for the shower.

I found a template online and changed it up a bit to create the invitations in the form of an airline ticket. They were printed on cardstock, corners were rounded and I perforated and folded the tab on the left side to make it look more realistic.

Front

Back

For decorations I made a long banner by cutting real maps into large triangles and glueing to kite string. I cut letters on the Cricut to spell out "welcome baby boy" (they're undecided on name still). I thought it could be used again in the nursery if they desired.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of this.

I made copies of vintage postcards on cardstock, cut them out and then stamped a postcard stamp on the backs. These were put into a small suitcase box for guests to write out either congratulatory messages or words of advice which they then pinned to a "clothesline" strung around a big tree. The line was attached to a balsa wood airplane.  I was disappointed that so few people did this - I was hoping that everyone would and we could assemble them all in a little book for Dana and John.

For the favors, we bagged blueberry and caramel popcorn from a favorite local popcorn place and stapled on toppers made from squares of plane-patterned paper and stamped "It's a  Boy" medallions. These were corralled in a paper mache suitcase trunk that I decoupaged with maps.  They can now use the trunk in the nursery for small toys.  I recently bought a TSA-approved plastic case for liquids to replace my ziploc travel baggie and the packaging was perfect for the baggage claim sign. All I did was cover the back with maps and covered the upper portion of the front with a strip of cardstock and cut letters. And the little stuffed airplane was purchased by my husband recently when he toured the Boeing facility in Seattle.  It was a cute addition.

On the same table as above, I placed an 8" x 10" piece of cardstock on which I had painted a leafless tree trunk. I had three colors of green ink for guests to ink up their finger or thumb, stamp it somewhere on the tree and sign it.  I printed "Baby Grisham, a special addition to our family tree", matted it and placed it near the bottom of the tree. This will be framed to hang in the nursery for a memento of the shower. The only photo I took of this is below but maybe you can get an idea from this. It really is cute when filled with "leaf" fingerprints.

Here are some of the gifts I made her, all of them similar to what I had recently made for my other daughter. (Sorry for the poor quality of the photos!)

Burp cloths from cloth diapers

Tag "blankie" with different textures of ribbons

Decorated clear paint pail for Hospital Survival Kit (filled with items that will come in handy but they might forget to pack). They can't open this until they get to the hospital and the suspense is killing them!

Top of pail

And, finally, a "Baby Blessing Ring" for holding all the cards from the shower as a special memento.  (This is actually the one I made for Kelly as I forgot to take a photo of Dana's but hers is very similar. I also added the vintage postcards that I mentioned above to this with the cards since there were so few.)

Everyone had a great time and it was lots of fun to plan and create for the shower. But now I'm ready to move on to the next step - baby grandson #2, due the end of June!

(Edit: I forgot to add a photo of my daughter - doesn't she look darling and hardly seven months pregnant! In fact, that's not even a maternity dress!)