A Baby Shower for Everett

I know I've written a lot lately about all the baby showers our friends and family have spoiled us with, but what I haven't mentioned is that a LOT of my friends are also getting ready to have babies of their own.  Not every baby shower I've attended lately has been all about me.  In fact, the last one I was at was one I was lucky enough to help host, and it was all about a sweet little boy named Everett and his mama, my friend Allison. For this shower, I teamed up with my friends Jenny and Sarah as hostesses.  Since our house is still a wreck and Sarah lives out of town, the party was held at Jenny's house.  Luckily for us, Allison had posted pictures of Everett's nursery so we were able to use that as a jumping off point for our shower theme.  The nursery has several cute tree decals, so a tree-theme was obvious.  We also settled on an orange and green color scheme.

Jenny was in charge of the flower decorations, and she did a great job!  I had my doubts about how she was going to pull off an orange and green arrangement, but she really pulled it off!  I love the tulips and daisies.

Some arrangements also had green hydrangeas mixed in.

For the front door, Jenny made a simple wreath with the invitation to the shower and a couple tulips.

The invitations we sent out were wearing cloth diapers.

Sarah was in charge of bringing cute napkins.  She went all out and ended up making some napkins out of two super cute green and orange fabrics.

She also brought with her these cute mini cupcakes with little green leaf toppers.

We did our best to make all of the foods fit in with the theme... We had green and orange veggies with spinach dip,

leaf-shaped pimento cheese (and bacon!) sandwiches,

green apples with toffee caramel dip,

baked tomato, mozzarella, and basil cups,

oreo truffles (ok, so maybe these don't really match the theme, but they tasted good!),

and orange sherbert punch.

Is anybody else all of a sudden really hungry?  No?  Just me?

I also tried out a new recipe to make these peanut butter pretzel truffles.  They were really tasty!  And this leaf dish is something we received as a wedding gift that I haven't gotten to use a ton, but it was perfect for this shower!

Keeping with the tree theme, we set out this tree trunk with instructions for everyone to add their fingerprint as a leaf on the tree.

I should've taken another picture of the tree at the end of the shower, because it looked really cute all filled up with colorful leaves!  Allison got to take it home with her in the frame and I think has already added it to Everett's nursery.

The guest of honor arrived just as we finished setting out all the food.  Perfect timing.

We had a really good turnout for the party.  Lots of people showed up to love on Mr. Everett!

Allison had a whole pile of presents to go through.  She and Everett received lots of great gifts!

Jenny watched from the back.  Thanks for having us in your home, J!

We made sure to get a picture of Allison with the three of us hostesses.  I do much better at remembering to take pictures when the shower's not for me!

We also tried for a group picture of most of the girls there, but I think some people got hidden in the back.  Oops!

As our guests left, we sent them on their way with a baby "Everett-green" tree.

They were individually wrapped tree sapplings with a tag that said, "Every backyard needs an Everett-green tree.  Like the boy, it'll grow tall as can be!"  We also attached the planting instructions so hopefully they'll be lots of growing evergreen trees scattered around town.

Baby Everett should arrive within the next month.  We are all so excited to meet him!!  And don't you worry, I have a feeling there will be lots of photo shoots with him and our little girl...

One Last Baby Shower

Doc and I can't get over how many people have showered us and helped us prepare for the upcoming arrival of our sweet baby girl.  I've already mentioned three baby showers - the one with my college friends, one from my coworkers, and another one from my local friends - but we still had one more, rounding out our shower total to four!  We have been spoiled rotten and are incredibly grateful to all of our friends and family members! This last shower was hosted by several of my mom's friends - lots of ladies that have known me for years and could probably be considered my second moms.  And they did an outstanding job!  Unfortunately, just like with my work shower, I took pictures of some of the details as soon as I arrived and then put my camera down and never picked it up again.  Darn!  I don't even have a picture of me with my hostesses!

The food table was full of scrumptious goodies.  I got to take a box of leftovers home and enjoyed a round two of shower food around 8:45 that evening. :)

It had a beautiful flower arrangement as the centerpiece!

You know zinnias are one of my favorite flowers, and there were lots of arrangements of them scattered around the house.  I love bright, happy flowers!

 

 

The punch bowl had a pretty fruit ring in it.

Cupcakes from Muddy's, my favorites!, were on the side table.  I'm told there was a slight mix-up and that's why the icing was blue instead of pink.  Didn't matter to me - they still tasted great!

These ladies know me well...they also had a candy bar set up with pink candies.  I guess I make it well-known how much I love sweets!

I had so many gifts to open!  (This pic was taken before they were all there.) We got SO much cute stuff for our little girl! Before I opened them, they were displayed in this gorgeous antique baby bed of Mrs. Jenny's.

As the guests left, they got to take one of these cute cake pops with them with an invitation to "Pop in to see Baby E!"  I hope they do come see her!

Thank you all for helping us prepare for the little Miss.  Now we just sit and wait for her to arrive!

Baby Shower

Have I ever mentioned that I have some of the best friends ever?  Well, I do.  For lots of reasons.  But right now it's because they went all out to throw me and baby girl the sweetest baby shower! I tried to take some pictures of the details as soon as I arrived so I wouldn't forget anything.  Here's the food table that was full of delicious snacks!

The chandelier above it was draped in pink.

Pink M&Ms and fresh flowers were also scattered around the house.

 

My hostesses, Allison and Jenny (and Kendra who couldn't be there!), manned their station and served up punch.  I wasted no time getting the food line started and filling up my plate.  (Some of these pictures I stole from Allison.)

  

The coffee table was full of presents!

Luckily, I brought the perfect little helper to assist me in getting through them all.

Brennie was on a mission to go through them as quickly as possible!  Occasionally, we had to take breaks to stop and actually look at the gifts.

After opening all the wonderful gifts, we headed over to the dessert table that Allison had set up.  Before cutting into the cake, I took a picture with my hostesses.

Speaking of cake, just look at it!  Isn't it gorgeous?!  Allison has mad skills.

I should've known it wouldn't be just a plain cake.  When Allison cut into it, we saw that it had 3 different flavored layers!  It was a neopolitan cake with chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry layers.  There was a layer of preserves too!

Here's my sweet niece, Bren, waiting for her piece of cake.

Before the party ended, I got a picture with some of my girlfriends that were there.  Thank you all for sharing your Sunday with me and for spoiling my sweet baby!

As everyone left, they got to take home one of these sweet favors: lip gloss in "Baby Lips" color.

The party was perfect.  Thank you, Jenny, Allison, and Kendra, for all you did to make me feel so special!

Emily Turns 30!

Way back in July, we had a surprise party for one of my besties!  How is it already the second week of September and I'm just now posting these pictures?  Geez. So Emily was turning 30 and her husband, Andrew, wanted to plan a get together in her honor.  Of course we were all glad to have an excuse to go out to dinner!  We met up at the Trolley Stop Market on a Friday night to celebrate the birthday girl.

Obviously since we were at a restaurant there was no need for lots of decorations.  Emily's sister Elizabeth brought a festive cake for us to have as dessert.

And we had festive napkins to go with it.

And hats!  It's not a birthday party without party hats!  It was required that everyone put them on before they arrived.  And since I was on the girl end of the table, I only have pictures of the girls.

   

   

After a bit of a wait, the birthday girl finally arrived!

I think we got her!

Sisters.

After dinner and a quick birthday song, we got to tear into that cake!

Our waitress was kind enough to take a group photo of us.

And then we tried for a goofy pose shot, but I think only a few of us got the memo.

Before leaving, I got a quick shot with the birthday girl.

And one with the hubs, too!

It was a really fun night!  Sorry it took me so long to post the pics, Em!

Baby Shower #2

The second baby shower that Doc and I (and baby girl!) were honored at was one hosted by my coworkers.  Surprise, surprise - I forgot my camera again.  I'm going to start blaming this on pregnancy brain!  Seriously, why can't I remember to bring it with me?? With the triple shower, I was able to snag pictures of all the people, but not many of the details.  This time it's the exact opposite.  When I saw all the decorations in the room, I quickly grabbed Doc's cellphone and tried to get pictures of everything, but I have zero pictures of any people.  Shame on me!

Even though I don't have any pictures of any guests, hostesses, or me and Doc, I still wanted to post these pictures of the details.  I have to tell you that my coworkers went all out!  At our workplace, we try to have a shower for anyone getting married or welcoming a baby but they are not typically elaborate parties.  We have a conference room on our floor that we book for the last hour of the day, a few people volunteer to bring light food, and there's minimal - if any - decorations.  But, like I said, this time they went all out!  Especially when you consider they had to drag all this stuff to work and I didn't see any of it in advance!

The theme of the shower was Baby E's Sweet Shoppe.  They definitely geared it towards my wicked sweet tooth!  Here's the table that I saw when I first walked into our Boardroom.  (It wasn't even in our typical conference room location; we went to the penthouse for this shower!)

My sweet friend Allyson made the backdrop out of crepe paper.  Did you know that when you sew two streamers of it together it ruffles up like that?  I sure didn't!  She sewed lots of streamers together and then attached them from some kind of board she picked up at Home Depot.  She made the banner to go on it too, and I hear she had sneakily had our intern cutting out the letters to attach to the fabric triangles!  And all this time I thought they were over there working on Fixed Assets...

The food table was chock full of all the best sweets.  Mason jars were filled with all kinds of pink candy.

Every Sweet Shoppe needs a tray full of cookies.

There was also lots of cupcakes from my favorite local bakery - Muddy's.

On the other tables were bottle vases filled with flowers.  Maybe they've been reading my blog??

Also on the tables were the cutest bowls of ice cream I've ever seen!  This is not the best picture of one of them, but they were small plastic bowls with scoops of ice cream made out of baby onesies and blankets topped with a cherry and spoon.  Super cute!

I really, really hate that these are all the pictures I have from the shower.  I'm sure this may not seem like a big deal of a shower compared to what other workplaces do, but my friends put so much effort into this and I really hope they know how much I appreciate it.  All the little details that made it so "me" did not go unnoticed at all!  Kim and Allyson - since I know you two were probably in charge (and the only two reading this), thank you both so, so much!  Everything was perfect!

I guess I should say that while completely adorable, the decorations are not the only reason I loved the shower.  I genuinely appreciate that so many friends took time out of their day to celebrate with us and shower our baby girl with gifts.  Trust me when I say that Doc and I are very aware of how lucky we are to work with people that care about us and our little girl and her well-being.  We are so very, very grateful.