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!

Thursday Thirteen: Baby Shower to-do list

I can't believe it!

The Rock Star Baby Shower, which was originally supposed to be this:

(scheduled for Jan 31)
and is now this:

is actually here! This Saturday!
So, I volunteered for this baby shower in August... which has given me 8 months to prepare. And I've worked so hard. But, it is my nature to do all of the PLANning way far in advance, but save all of the DOing until the very last minute. Like my term paper, when I had all of my notecards meticulously organized, but when it came down to it, my friends the Kathys (who thankfully did not function the same way that I do) and I were typing that stuff in and printing it out just before the bell rang. That's my kind of adrenaline rush. Not the kind that comes from skydiving or riding rollercoasters.
Anyway, moral of the story is... it's Thursday and I don't find it hard to believe at all that I have (at least) thirteen baby-shower related things on my to-do list. I have consulted my Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that has become my "baby shower brain" and here's what I need to do:

1. Finish my favor bag toppers. I say "finish" because guess what... I already have ONE done! Woot woot! I'm 1/13th of the way there!

2. Drop off my baking pans @ my friend Wendy's house. She has graciously offered to let me use her oven since mine is still not working. Although the oven guys are coming here in 20 minutes (which means I should probably go put a sweatshirt on instead of my robe). But they've been here 3 times before and no progress has been made on the oven so I'm not counting on using my own oven. I need to make red velvet cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, and star shaped brownies.  Actually, the oven guys came while I was writing this post and I've been instructed to bake brownies TODAY here in my oven and report my findings to them. They clearly don't understand that if I were able to bake in my own oven, I would be doing it at 2 a.m. on Friday/Saturday... I would've thought that after all the time we've spent together they would know me a little bit better than that. 

3. Cut out two more sheets of guitars. If I never cut another skull or guitar out again, I think I would lead a satisfying life. Thank goodness for my Stampin' Up scissors!
4. After cutting, I need to turn all of these skulls & guitars into cupcake toppers, mobiles, garlands, and whatever else I have drawn in my little sketch book. Because I need to make my living room look like this:

5. That means I need to stick some iron-on transfers onto some onesies, figure out how to hang a clothes line on my living room wall (I really want it on the wall, but if I can't figure it out, I'll go for the curtain rod over the sliding door) and then hang my cute little baby clothes (I mean the cute little baby clothes I bought for the baby!) on it. (David keeps scolding me for calling this MY shower)
6. Make a garland for the mantle, remove the Easter eggs from the big vase thingy and put red and black balls in it. Get out the red candle holders I've been collecting and stick some red and/or black ribbon on the clear candle holders I have (only 4? how is that possible?) and get my "mantlescape" ready.
7. Slipcover my couches. Yes, you heard me correctly. I don't want to have a black-red-and-silver baby shower with brown couches! David is lucky I haven't spraypainted the coffee table...or made him lug the step tansu out of the living room!
8. And also knit a heart-shaped pillow (half of it is already done and around here somewhere) so I can add wings and a "MOM" tattoo. And find something to stuff it with... I might end up unstuffing one of my own pillows or stealing a stuffed animal from a small child. 

8. Channel my inner Hermione Granger (who is sooooo much cooler than Harry) and turn chocolate into guitars.
9. And also stop eating the pretzel rods so I can dip them in the red and white melting chocolates. At least I hope "candy melts" are chocolate. Or at least edible.
10. And make Oreo truffles.

11. And go to the commissary for veggies. Because even though I would've been totally satisfied with a menu consisting of chocolate, the former-mother-to-be (now just mother) requested "my" (mom's) taco salad. And if we're going to have taco salad, we can't just have a dessert shower so I need some veggies and etc. now, which adds about 100 more things to my to-do list between chopping and mixing and arranging stuff on platters.

 

12. Spruce up this nasty looking wreath that was supposed to look like this but failed. This is what happens, people, when you live an ocean away from a Hobby Lobby or Jo-Ann and are forced to shop at the base Arts & Crap center. There are no foam wreath forms, and so you must "improvise" using an embroidery hoop that makes your wreath look scraggly and sad. And also I blame the fact that I never went to kindergarten and therefore never learned to tie a proper knot. And also that I used lousy ribbon because I am a cheapskate. But maybe it will look a little bit better when I stick some skulls and guitars on it and hang it on my front door. Or maybe I will finagle my own wreath form from some newspaper and a wire hanger? Because you know I need more things to do in the next 50 hours.

13. Wrap the prizes for the games (people don't like prizes that other people pick out anyway, so we're going with a tealight candle) and find some kind of hard surface for people to write on, and gather up some pens. And also think of a way to let everyone know that if I were allowed to play the game called "make as many words as you can out of the baby's name" I would totally win. Because I already played by myself and got way over 100 words, without including plurals. Including an 8 letter word. I might give myself a prize for that anyway. I deserve it.

And one thing I already finished:

Well, I might want to add silver stars to the napkin rings...

Hippity Hoppity

'Twas the night before Easter... so we colored our Easter Eggs!
    Three eggs cracked in the process of hard boiling, but I decided that only 2 were too cracked to color. I searched high and low for a plain ol' Paas dye kit. The BX only had fancy-schmancy tie-dye eggs, speckle eggs, princess eggs with fairy glitter. (I bought the one with fairy glitter *just in case*). I found the Paas at the commissary and I was very happy until I opened the package on Saturday night. Where's the wax crayon? Where are the egg holder thingies with the Paas characters on them? The egg holders in this package didn't even hold my eggs properly. And there were only 3 of those wrap-around things, which I love but always forget to use. I feel bad for all of the kids (and me) who will never (again) know the true Paas Easter Egg Dying experience. I know, I know that Paas is not the reason for the season...but it's definitely a fun part!
     I think that this is only our second Easter together. Maybe our 3rd (out of a possible 7). I don't really recall coloring eggs together, which is probably why I invited David to color eggs with me. When he had already dropped 4 of our 10 eggs in the dye before I even had a chance to bend the egg dipper, I began to second-guess my decision to include him in my fun. What kind of person doesn't even draw on ONE egg? Or carefully consider how many of each color you want BEFORE dropping them in the dye? Crazy!

Bowls do not work as well as coffee cups for dying eggs. But I was nervous about staining the insides of my light blue and light green coffee cups (??) I wonder if my mom has the old coffee cups that we used to use for dying eggs, the light brown ones with the black line at the top.

I let the eggs "soak" while I prepped Sunday's breakfast, so they got nice and bright! :)

These are supposed to look like bird nests made out of chow mein noodles and marshmallows. A few of them look like bird nests and help the other ones. If you can tell that one is supposed to be a bird nest, you can guess that the similarly shaped blob next to it is too. You're supposed to put them in muffin tins to shape them, but I thought that might get too messy. (I think that's a good thing, because I had to shimmy them up 

with a little serving spatula and that would've been much harder in a muffin tin).

The night before Easter (because even though I love to plan things waaaaaaaay in advance, I am only capable of doing them at the very last minute) I made these little treat bags. There used to be 7 of them and one of them didn't used to be empty. I forgot to take a picture before people took their bags. I'm glad that 2 people forgot theirs! 

I also spent the night before Easter knitting a little bunny hat for this little guy. (And also the time immediately after I ate my Easter breakfast at brunch time because remember what I said about the *very last minute*?)

Unfortunately, the darn kid slept the whole time and I didn't get to see if the hat fit his tiny little head. And I hadn't taken a picture of the hat not on his head either, so I don't even have a pic for Ravelry.  Can you tell that I learned how to hold an infant as a small child? Jaclyn asked, "do you want to hold him?" and I sat on the couch with a pillow under my elbow and got my arms ready for her to set him down. And I didn't move. The baby is 3 months and almost 7 lbs now (this is the 9 week preemie baby) but still a little tiny for me. When a full-term baby is around 3 months old, I'm fine with (although still not terribly interested in) holding it. I like babies best when they are maybe 7 or 8 months and up. They're just more fun that way. 

Since I mentioned my "Easter Breakfast at Brunch Time" (calling it this made it possible for me to avoid cooking a ham--which I think looks like the inside of your knee when you take a bad fall on your bicycle, and besides I still don't have a functional oven!) I will take this opportunity to tell you what I made--

fruit salad with lime & honey dressing (chopped all but the apples & bananas on Saturday night)--kiwis, strawberries, oranges, grapes, apples & bananas and then 1/3c fresh squeezed lime juice + 3/4c honey whisked together and poured on. It was delicious!

so-much-better-than-grits grits (browned the sausage and scrambled the eggs on Saturday night)--in the morning I just had to boil some water with butter (lots) and salt, dump in some grits, stir in the sausage, eggs, dump in a jar of that bright yellow hot cheese, and move it all to the crockpot to keep it warm. Y-U-M. So good. 

Mascarpone stuffed French toast with peach syrup- all the prep for this was done on Sunday, but it wasn't too bad. Whisk up some powdered sugar and lemon zest with the mascarpone and stuff it in some Texas toast. My plan was to do this as a "french toast station" where you dip it in the batter yourself and make it to order (usually I do a baked french toast which is nice because it's all warm and done at the same time) but my friend Wendy and I ended up cooking up all the french toast and eating last. Oh well. We are also the only ones who had the delicious peach sauce, which was just peaches, sugar, cinnamon & nutmeg. 

The picture is of the last piece, which I had for breakfast this morning. We had some for dinner last night too. It was delicious, but I'm glad to see it go. 

Sunrise Punch- did this on Sunday morning too...but it definitely would've been smarter to squeeze the 7 limes the night before. I made too much of this (triple recipe?) and will be drinking it all week. 2 c cran, 2 c pineapple, 1 can apricot nectar, 1/2 c lime juice, top it off with ginger ale to serve. 

My Easter "mantlescape".

(I tried the grass & eggs parfait but David thought it would look better with all of the eggs on top). Made my quick garland with some pastel scraps and my scallop punch. 

My sock bunnies are so cute! The pitcher is from one of the charity shops in town centre. I thought it was springy and sweet.

This is David's basket (but one of those Rice Krispies Treats chocolate covered bunnies is MINE!)

My basket. Brown Bunny arrived with plenty of time to spare. He's in charge of guarding my Cadbury Creme Egg. I was concerned that it might be bad juju to put bunny ears on my shisa. But he looks cute and it hasn't brought bad luck so far. 

And what do two adults do with their Easter eggs after all the company has gone home? 

Why, have an Easter Egg hunt, of course!

PS- I made my sweater!