A Diva’s Shower

        

“I don’t want a regular baby shower”…”the baby isn’t even here yet” were the words out of my cousin’s mouth when discussing ideas for her baby shower.  Of course these words did anything but surprise me.  I mean, the Diva herself, wanting a shower celebrating her rather than the baby was pretty much what one could expect from the self-proclaimed celebrity.  As much as I wanted to tease her, it was a major challenge and gave me great inspiration to try to come up with a shower that was more sophisticated and celeb style rather than the typical pastel-covered, toilette paper, cotton ball, all about the baby baby showers we all know and love.  Her color choices were black and white with a touch of pink.  I truly do not know what it is with these people and their hatred of pink.  Anyway, I had her chose a pattern (we ended up with damask) as I feel it should be automatic to pick a pattern if your colors are black and white.  I mean, it’s such a dynamic pairing,  you want to have a focus or else you will find yourselves with polka dots and stripes.  Ultimately this  ended up being one of my favorite events.  My cousin’s style brought out a whole new level of creativity.  Not to mention the fact that the budget was tight for this type of shower so I even had to make up original games and revamp (or recheap) oldies, but it’s so fun to see the cheapest way  to achieve a chic look.

These are my favorite and most time consuming pieces.  They are called pomanders and I got it from one of my favorite websites, http://www.hwtm.com, but instead of using crepe paper sheets which I could not find, I used paper streamer from the 99 Cents Only Store and bought the Styrofoam balls from Michael’s with my 50% off coupon.

Wait, did i already exclaim something was my fav because this is by and large my favorite addition.  I love the idea  of homemade paper mobiles so much, I plan to put it in the nursery for my second (whenever that happens).  You can Google search paper mobiles for baby nursery and find some of the most jaw dropping creations.  And to think, I thought this was an original idea.  Regardless, I love it!

The Dessert Bar which included a Candy Bar (The other aspect of the theme was cocktail party…you get the point) was so delicious according to guests.  Imagine my devastation when I had to wait until the end of the shower to scrape over the leftovers.

As a gift to the guest of honor, I took pictures of her guests giving words of advice and made a framed collage.  The “chalk board” was the same black foam board (from Wal-mart for only $1.99) that was used for Baby Shower Pictionary.  I used chalk I had leftover from another shower drawing.  You can imagine that after some time it got a little messy.  A little tip though, it actually erases with a wet paper towel.  This is my go to answer for all the fancy people that can afford an actual chalk board and keep throwing it in my face.  Sidebar:  I really love the chalkboards.

A Gift From The Heart

A Registry is a suggestion, a fallback if you run out of time, help for those who not experienced, and an easy out for those who just don’t feel like looking.  Now, I have used the Registry a time or two.  If i am in a hurry and/or ran out of time, it is my go-to place to shop.  Fortunately for me, when my good friend Gisela was having her baby shower, I had the time.  I always prefer to be able to personalize a gift.  And come on, it’s no secret that registry items are usually expensive.  And if you are fortunate enough to have a registry with cheap options…well you can’t hide how much you spent.  It is always my mission in life to get the best for cheap.   For this gift, I wanted to do a basket…oh who am I kidding, I always want to do a basket.  The first thing is I want the basket to be able to be reused so I get one that is neutral or matches a known color scheme.  Since this was for a baby shower and i am the mother of a two year old, I knew exactly what I wanted to put inside.  I made a list and went to seek out the best prices.  This is one of the bonuses of doing a “Create your Own” gift basket.  This may have been pretty bold, but I knew I would take almost everything out of the packaging to make my basket pretty and make my own wrapping.  This totally worked out when I went to Ross and  someone has ripped part of the Gerber onesie package including the price.  I was charged $2.99.  Guess what I went to…..oops, I won’t say the name, but it was next door and that same exact package with the same 4 onesies was  $9.99.  This is probably #1 on the list of why I do not purchase directly from Registry’s.

Gisela is expecting a boy so what started off as blue turned into a blue and brown color scheme.  I had brown ribbon left over from another event so i used that to wrap like products together.  I then used my cutting machine to cut labels that I can put around each wrapped item so there is no confusion for their us.  Also it is just fun to say cute things about the item.  My color printer couldn’t get hooked up in time so after a brief temper tantrum I decided to use markers to add some color.  And, of course, no basket would be complete without ribbons.  When I went to look for cards, I wanted to get one of those fancy cute ones, but they want like six bucks!  You’ll never guess what i did, I used left over card stock and made a homemade card where I was able to express myself personally.

The best part was she loved it and it meant just as much to her as it did to me making it.  Not only did I save money, but I was able to make something special for a dear friend!

A Beach Bash for a Little Pirate

With this new found love for creating wonderful celebrations and spaces for a bargain, it was inevitable that I would go wild on my son’s 2nd birthday.  Well at least in my head I did.  My son’s actual birthday and celebration, was to occur the weekend after I threw my cousin’s baby shower.  I was so burned out that my endless stream of ideas came to a hault when it came to practical application.  Nevertheless, I still managed to put something together for my little one that had him super excited.

The theme was pirate and the location was Zuma beach in Malibu, California.  To my dismay, there are restrictions for having a party at a “public” beach.  We were only allowed a 10 x 10 ft. canopy, no more than 50 guests, and still maintain “normal” beach activity which apparently excludes a table set up.  O.k. so I ignored that last part.  Call it rebellious, but I figured if I was going to have the canopy, I would have the table.

This event was the first time I decided to  focus on food and of course I went crazy.  From roast beef sandwiches with onions roasted in balsamic vinegar to three different types of cupcakes.  My concept with the food was no utensils and it actually worked out pretty well.   Something I am really proud of is using dowels made for cake stands for the skewers.  They were thick and had flat edges so no kids poking their eyes out.

I also decided that 2 years old was a little too young for organized activities so I just brought beach  toys and borrowed a play table from a friend and brought one for Connor (my son) as his gift and another play item.  My husband dug a hole in the sand and we threw in several beach balls (Amazon’s error got me 9 extra pirate beach balls which later was added to the take home favor).  The kids loved the toys.  Speaking of the take home favor, I have heard it all.  From not giving it to the children because it teaches them to expect things, to giving over the top favors to impress the parents.  Well to avoid giving cheap 99 cent gifts, which is my budget,  I gave food.  I gave goldfish, squeeze packs, apple sauce and homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  I added bubbles since it’s just a  soapy liquid and I had my husband burn a CD of CJ’s favorite kiddie songs with the addition of a personalized Sesame Street song (it says their name).  The bucket was $1.20 at Michael’s (with my coupon), the cds were nearly free.  I would say each bucket cost around $6.

What I learned from this event is all you need for a toddler party are random and I mean random toys for the kids and good food for the adults and everyone will call it an amazing party!