Totally Rocked the Baby Shower!

    (you may have seen some of these photos already in an older post... there are new pictures in here too!)

When I learned that my friend Jaclyn was pregnant, I knew that I wanted to be the one to throw her shower. Not because she is my best friend (I had only known her for a month or 2 before she announced her pregnancy), but because 1-she just moved here and if  I were having a baby and had just moved to a new place, I would be a little bummed that I wouldn't get a great shower and 2- I knew that if anyone else offered, their shower wouldn't be as good as mine.
Jaclyn & her husband have lots of tattoos and wear a lot of Ed Hardy-esque fashions. As I was researching & thinking of possible baby shower themes, I knew this one would be PERfect! And I wasn't sure that anyone else of child-bearing age in my social circle would be as likely to like this theme...
I asked Jaclyn & Jason what they would think of a "Rock the Cradle"/"Babies Rock"/"ROCK-abye Baby"/Rock Star themed shower and they were VERY receptive. So I totally ran with it!

The original invitation (top) was designed on photoshop elements using some digital scrapbook supplies. I recolored the guitars since the originals were pink and blue. After much thought, I decided (even though we knew Jaclyn would be having a boy) to go with the "gender neutral" color scheme of black, silver and red instead of black, silver and hot pink or black, silver and electric blue. My reasoning behind this was 1---I could get started collecting & making stuff before they found out the gender and 2---I would be able to re-use red stuff for other decorating & party purposes (Twilight, Oscars, Christmas, Valentines, etc.) And as a bonus, I found lots of red stuff at Christmas time.
The baby was originally scheduled for March 20, so his shower was set for January 31. But...baby arrived on January 15, so we pushed the shower to whenever he would be home from the hospital. He went home on March 7, but April 10 was the first weekend that we didn't have any conflicts.
So in addition to the original invitation, I made a cancellation notice (didn't get a pic!) and a new invitation (bottom). I had a whole extra set of invitations because they were late being delivered so I got some printed at the photo developer in town, so I cut these all apart to use them for the new invitations. It was a lot of cutting! But the invites ROCK, don't they?

On to some of the other shower crafts: 

I wanted to use lots of skulls and guitars and the way to get just what I wanted, in the sizes that I wanted and for a decent price was to create photoshop projects with as many of the shapes as I could get on them and order them as photos (8x10, 5x7 and a few 8x8s). I had way too many skulls and guitars printed.  I see a lot of "You Rock!" cards in my craft table's future. 

Some were used on the toppers for the favors:

Chocolate guitar molds were possibly my most brilliant idea for the shower. I toyed with the idea of sugar cookies but an electric guitar cookie cutter was going to run around $12! The candy mold was $2 or $3 AND I didn't have to deal with any icing! So easy, and they were a BIG hit! 

I used the larger skulls & guitar on the ugly wreath I made for the front door. The cross bones had been put away in a pile of stuff that I moved off the couch so they hadn't been attached when this picture was taken. I found them and stuck them on later. I wish I would've used more skulls & guitars on this, but I was really really really working at the last minute by this point!

This may have been my favorite party detail! Get it? Potty like a Rock Star? Instead of Party? I crack myself up sometimes! And I used a blue & a pink guitar on the door here on purpose...because it's a bathroom for boys AND girls.

I found these perfect red and black (with red glitter) little balls at Pound Stretcher at Christmas time. My original plan was to have skulls & guitars dangling here too, but I couldn't get them to stick on the ribbon properly. It JUST NOW dawned on me that I could've dangled them from fishing line or thread and hung them straight down at the points where the ribbon is blu-tacked up to the mantle. Oh well......

I've been saving the silver paper that my friend Concetta had wrapped her cookies in for my cookie exchange in December! I knew it would come in handy for this! The silver can is a tea canister and I just glue-dotted a ribbon around it, stuck on a guitar and put a little floral foam inside. Taped chipboard letters to spell the baby's name onto lollipop sticks and smooshed a little square of red tissue in there. I also wrapped my plain clear votive cups with ribbon from my scrapbook stash. My friend Sandi picked up the silver star wire garland stuff for me after Christmas. I won't lie and say that I was underbudget for this shower, but I definitely was able to save on quite a bit using what I have, buying things that can be reused and taking advantage of sales.

Here's the whole mantle. I have 2 clear square bud vases that I wrapped with red and black ribbon and filled partway with clear marbles. One has a skull and a guitar on lollipop sticks sticking in it and the other has the pens for party games.....all red and black pens, of course!
And speaking of party games...

The prizes were little tea lights- cranberry cosmo and the blue one that smells like laundry. There weren't any black candles, so I went with blue for "it's a boy" plus laundry smells so good and I rarely do it, so I'm happy to keep the leftover candles and make it smell like clean laundry in here.
We played a pregnancy/baby trivia quiz with questions like, "Who did they share the news with first?", "What theme did Jaclyn choose for the nursery?", "What girl's name did Jaclyn like that Jason vetoed?" and "What was the baby's birth weight?" (3 lbs., 7 oz.!)
There was also a game in which people had to guess the measurements taken at his most recent doctor's visit (the Thursday before the party), a word scramble, and a baby-word scattergories type game.
I did some research and made a "Match the Rock Star Baby to the Rock Star" game. This one could've been much tougher had I not included the birth years!  I included some that I thought *everybody* just knew (Moon Unit, Lisa Marie, and "Prince Michael, Paris and Blanket") and some that were a little tougher.
At 2am the day of the shower, I remembered that I forgot to get a piggy bank for a game I wanted to play. I e-mailed Jaclyn and asked her to bring one if she or anyone else had already gotten him one. So funny.....she and her mother-in-law had gone to the craft store the day before and just happened to buy supplies for and paint a piggy bank for him! We played "I Never"--baby related. So for instance, I said, "I never....had a baby!" and anyone who HAD had a baby put a coin in the piggy bank. We each started with 5 coins, I shared some coins with anyone who didn't have any. This one was fun and got Coy's piggy bank off to a good start!
When everyone arrived, I had them pull a number out of a bowl. As I was writing down the gifts, I made tallies for how many bibs, pacifiers, socks and stuffed animals he got. (0, 3, 6, 2).  I asked "Did anyone have the number 3?" and whoever had pulled that number got a prize. We also set a timer during gift opening and the person whose present Jaclyn was opening when the timer went off got a prize.
Okay, time for more pictures!

The prizes were wrapped in red and black tissue paper and put in my corningware! That stuff is so handy! :)
More candles, red balls that I put out at Christmas time, another tea canister (I have a lot of tea) and star garland on the step tansu. Anything I can do to highlight the step tansu, I do. LOVE that thing!

The step tansu also functioned as the gift holder. Mine is (of course) wrapped in red and black! It's 3 pairs of pants that go with these:

These rockin' little outfits came from one of my many trips to the baby section at the BX. I just knew that if I checked often enough, something rock-ish was bound to be there eventually! I bought them all in 12-18 months sizes since babies usually get lots of tiny clothes as gifts!

I think one of the best ideas I found online on one of the many many party blogs I've been reading was about a baby shower that was brown and pink (maybe?) and they slipcovered their couches and chairs! I bought some cheap broadcloth cotton (with a coupon and got a rebate!) and just did a sloppy "cover & pin". I think it really put a nice touch on the party and brought everything together...the biggest items in the room went with the theme:

I covered the pillows too with red and silver ribbon...my favorite pillow is in the next picture, with a black tulle bow! The paper lanterns were ordered from Crate & Barrel at the end of summer, on clearance (they were paired with blue ones for 4th of July!)

You can't really see the tulle bow, but trust me, it's cute! I ran out of fabric, so covered the ottoman top with red and bottom with scraps of black and black tulle. Put my white table cloth on the brown coffee table (might have been a bad idea, as there was a 2 year old here and in attempt to be nice, I gave her crayons!!) I totally meant to sprinkle some temporary tattoos on the table too and forgot about them. :(

Now, time for he important stuff...FOOD! 

You already know about my napkins. (Which, by the way, one of the guests said, "did you make these too? you're really good at the little details!" Makes my heart sing!)

 Here are the napkins with the other food-- broccoli salad, the Dorito taco salad that my mom makes...Jaclyn requested this immediately after I took it to another party in September or October. She was so happy about the Dorito salad being here! Caprese on a stick... hardly anybody ate this! I told David that if I would've known WE would be the ones eating it, I would've had him buy the GOOD mozzarella instead of the cheap stuff! And sausage & cheese--lots of the cheese is star shaped. Thank goodness for my bento-supply binge shopping right before we left Okinawa!

More skulls and guitars to use as....

Cupcake toppers! (I couldn't wait to see how cute they would look!) I made chocolate Devil's food and Red Velvet cupcakes (from the boxes! gasp!) Silver baking cups were key! My mom sent me this great cupcake stand! I love it much more than the kid that hold individual cupcakes, because I could cut little squares of cake, brownies, or cookies etc. on here. I had my friend Jessica cover the edges of the stand with black and silver ribbon.

And here they are all frosted & sprinkled. Picked up the black sprinkles at the BX before Halloween. Since I took the lame way out and made cake-mix cupcakes, I made homemade frosting.

The rest of the dessert table included white-chocolate dipped pretzels (with black and red sprinkles) and cherry cheeseball dip with chips ahoy and nilla wafers. Shhhh....don't tell anyone, but.....the cherry cheeseball is leftover from my cookie exchange! I've been saving it in the freezer since it's red and white!

Coy was the only one who didn't eat any of my food :)

 I was so excited when Jaclyn and her mother-in-law came in wearing their handmade rock-theme t-shirts! She said they bought supplies at the craft store (I didn't see any of this when I went to the craft store!!) and painted shirts for themselves and a onesie for Coy! (He only wore his for a short period of time due to diaper blow-out).

David won this guitar for me at a carnival down the street a few weeks ago! 

My mom and Aunt Cookie made me a special apron to wear for the party! Even though I finished baking long before this was taken, I couldn't bear the thought of taking off my punky apron!

The girl who calls ME Martha Stewart brought the baby's gift in this cute basket! I thought that was fairly Martha of her!

I love love love that someone bought a set of rock star themed bottles & pacifiers for the baby!

And of course, presents don't need to be rock-star related to be absolutely adorable!!


I'm pretty satisfied with how the party went! I got lots of compliments...one girl said, "I went to a baby shower a few weeks ago and it wasn't nearly as good as this!" We all had a good time and I was glad that Jaclyn's mother-in-law was able to make the trip to England to see the baby...and come to his shower! :)
Annnnnnd.....I have no idea what I will do with all of my free time now!