A Whale of a Baby Shower

When one of my best friends, Christina, found out she was having a baby girl, I instantly knew I wanted to do some sort of nautical themed baby shower consisting of Navy and Pink as our friendship has basically been built on laying by the pool and boating. 

When I saw a bunch of adorable whale related baby outfits at Target, it was a done deal. You all know by now that planning parties is pretty much my favorite thing in the world {see my BBQ Couples Baby Shower, Fox Themed Baby Shower and Kenley's Pink Balloon 1st Birthday Party} but this one might have been my favorite! With help from my mom, we were able to put together a girly and summery baby shower for Christina and her peanut. 

As any good party knows, it starts with the stationery. My incredible friend Erin designed the invitations and all the printed materials for me and I'm obsessed with how they turned out. Erin totally got my vision and I really can't believe how quickly and easily these came together. Check out Designs by Erin to see more of her amazing work!

From there we worked on the decor,  food and games. Everything was hot pink. light pink and navy and if it had a whale on it....I bought it. Christina's Granny Frannie even said "What's with all the whales?" HA! I also DIY'd some poms, a diaper life preserver and a garland. Looking back I wish I had done more with the food table, but live and learn, right? There's always another party!

In the SHOWER bags were one baby item starting with the letter written on the bag {S-shampoo, H-hanger, O-onesies...you get the drift} and the guests had to guess the items inside. It's my new favorite shower game. Probably my favorite detail from the shower was our little "Message in a Bottle" station. Each guest was asked to write a message filled with advice or well wishes to Christina and roll it up and put it in a bottle. Then, Christina can open them as she feels she needs some encouragement.

For the menu,  we did a light summery menu consisting of Chicken Salad on Croissants, a Balsamic Strawberry & Walnut Salad, Watermelon Feta Basil bites, Deviled Eggs, and these yummy Cucumber Dill Bacon Bites. Drinks consisted of Raspberry Lemonade and Bottled Whale Water - simple, easy and preggo appropriate! The cake and the whale cookie favors were made by a friend of mine and were just as delicious as they were adorable!

It was such a fun and special day celebrating one of my most favorite people! I could not have pulled this off without the help of my mom and I love that we can do things like this together. My mom totally gets how type-A I am and that I have a vision in my head which doesn't always come together in the most glamorous way - but usually ends up OK.

Enough of me blabbing...here's the Whale Shower:

Balloons : The Corner Balloon Shoppe

Baby Clothes, SHoes & Sunglasses : Target

Whale Towel : Pottery Barn Kids

Invitations & Printed materials : Designs by Erin

Message Bottles : Invitation in a Bottle

Cake & Cookies : Personal Friend {let me know if you want her contact info!}

Food & Decor : Me & My Mama

{Guest Mama} Woodland Baby Shower

Happy Tuesday mamas, it's time for....

Here's what you do:
1. Write a post about ANYTHING baby {or pregnancy} related.
2. Add my button to your post.
3. Link your post with the link-up tool found at the end of all of my posts.
EASY PEASY! 

So by now you all know that one of my absolute favorite things is throwing parties! I don't care if it's a First Birthday, A BBQ Baby Shower or just a dinner party for a couple of friends...I LOVE to entertain! Today I'm really excited that Jessica is here to share an ADORABLE Woodland Themed Baby Shower - I'm seriously obsessed with some of these little details {particularly the little red birdie in the thermal hat}.

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Hi! I'm Jessica blogging over at The Journey of Autumn where I talk about our adventures raising a toddler, my love for throwing a good party and everything in between. Today I'll be sharing the woodland themed baby shower I threw recently.

 
In November I threw my best friend, Stacy's, baby shower for her soon to be baby Chase. She let me have full reign over the theme and everything else. Naturally, I went wild!

When I started thinking about a theme, I wanted something that was masculine without having blue everything. I'm so in love with all the woodland creatures that have been filling the stores and thought it'd make the cutest boy baby shower theme. I started with this simple and cute invite from Etsy.

Via

My inspiration was rich colors, forest things and of course lots of woodland creatures.

{food/drinks}

I wanted some simple but good food that would be easy to re-fill and wouldn't get cold.We had some sandwiches, Chick-fil-A nuggets, crackers and dips, pasta salad and other small appetizers.

Some mason jars, washi tape, water and fresh cranberries created the perfect accent to the food counter.

 And a 'moss' ball to go with the theme. A green onion cheese ball covered in parsley. It was delish!

For drinks, I made this drink we always have at family parties. It doesn't have an actual name, but it's just lime sorbet with Sprite poured over it. It's so simple and absolutely delish! It foams up when the Sprite is added which went perfectly with the woodland theme.

We also had a hot cocoa bar! This was one of my favorite parts of the party. I used a CrockPot recipe for the actual hot cocoa. (A note to this recipe, it takes far longer, about double the time, for the chocolate to melt than the recipe actually calls for. I also added more milk because it was too rich.)

I used these super cute tin buckets with chalkboard labels and some glass bowls with chalkboard labels I added. I used them to set out the crushed peppermint, candy canes, marshmallows and straws. There was also whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles, oh my. The cups were just simple ones from Party City so I fancied them up with a fox stamp. It added just a little something more. The birch straws went perfectly with the decor too!

{desserts}
There were two types of cupcakes...lemon with blueberries and red velvet, both with cream cheese frosting. The red velvet cupcakes were made to look like mushrooms by adding white chocolate chips upside down. The other ones were an earthy green with some pine cone toothpicks. We also had chocolate chip cookies and chocolate covered pretzels. Simple but oh so yummy!

 {decor}

I really lucked out in the decor department because all the woodland decor was already out! Most of the woodland creatures were from Target. I also used some burlap, mason jars, kraft paper and bunting leftover from my daughters birthday party.

 I made some bunting of the babies name and another banner with some prints I did. I found a plaid pattern, the deer head and made this 'Oh, Boy' banner. I love how it turned out!

One of my favorite pieces are the baby's initials 'C.P.J.' covered in moss. I bought the moss and cardboard letters at Hobby Lobby and simply glued the moss onto the letters. The best part, these can be used in the nursery too!

{favors}
As a 'thank you' gift to all the guests, they received a mason jar filled with all the fixings to make s'mores.

I originally got the idea of s'mores in a jar from Jess at Little Baby Garvin. I then added a tag stamped with 'thank you' and tied it on with twine. Another IG friend gave me the idea of adding heating instructions. I printed them on a plaid pattern sheet with some simple heating instructions to make them in the oven if you don't have a fire. Although, a fire is still the only best way to make s'mores!

In all our excitement of the shower, nobody took any other pictures! We have lots of gift opening and not much else. #oops

We had a wonderful time with the mama to be, eating, visiting, laughing and celebrating Mr. Chase. I can't wait to meet my little 'nephew' to be!

be sure to visit my friend:

Fox Themed Baby Shower

On Monday I shared my FAVORITE Baby Shower game which we played at a shower I co-hosted this past weekend. The shower was for my dear friend Sara {yes, the same same Sara as Sara Jayne Photography who is so much more than just our family photographer}. SJ is due with her first baby {BOY!} in March and I was so excited to help put this shower together for her! Sara and her husband John have a first born fur baby named Walter...

...and they love him so much they have decided to put together a Fox and the Basset Hound themed nursery {but not Disney movie style - I've begged SJ to share it here when it's done, so you'll just have to wait to see how incredible this nursery is} and so to coordinate, I thought a Fox Themed Baby Shower would be perfect! 

We had such a fun afternoon celebrating the beautiful mama-to-be! 

John & Sara are such a fun, creative, loyal, generous, kind, thoughtful, and super fun couple and I know they are not only going to rock this whole parent thing but are going to do it with so much love and passion...not to mention they will have the world's best baby photos! I'm counting the days until I get to meet Baby Boy S and feel so grateful to have a friend like Sara and to get to be involved in this special time in her life.