A Baby Shower for Baby Jimenez

I'm submitting this special day's post to the Blog County Fair under the category of tablescapes (even though there is much more to this day). I think I may have misunderstood the rules a bit of the blog county fair, but I'm thinking you could potentially have a craft section at the fair where someone teaches you how to use paper flowers for decoration and nature.  Sorry fellow blog participants.  I probably should have paid more attention.  I'm loving all of your projects!

One of my beautiful best friends is having a cutie patootie....any day now! While it may have seemed like I've been neglecting my crafting - I swear I haven't!  I've been traveling for work and busy making items for her shower.  And as I had mentioned before, my amazing friends are very supportive of my blog, so I had to abstain from posting anything because she would have seen everything!

Now, let's all relish in this little baby bump!  I'm so excited to meet baby Jimenez.  I'm sure he/she will be one of my newer cutie babies to snuggle and love!!  I can't wait to be Tia Nubia to Baby Jimenez.

Anyway, Sogol's adorable little sister, Sarra, was our official photographer.  She took some incredible shots of some of my goodies.  Thank you Sarra for documenting the entire day for us!

The paper crafting started with the invitations.  Sogol had actually found an adorable invite that had fairy tale-like text.  We tweaked it a bit and used that to create the overall theme of the shower.

We then tackled the centerpieces.  We wanted to keep costs down but we didn't compromise the fantasy forest feeling we had hoped to create.  So we opted to get some white branches and dress them up :)  Using my fun Cricut, I cut a mess of different butterflies to hot glue on to the branches.  I also found a die cut (Sizzex, I think) that helped me create 3-D roses that we used on the branches and as "petals" on the table.  Here are a few pics.

At the tables we used hurricanes to hold the large trees, so we filled them with crystals.  We had so many we let them spill over onto the table like confetti.

Regan, one of the fairy godmothers, is the queen of bows (and entertaining), so we have to thank her for some of the great additions to the paper creations.  She had these pretty green grass balls that we dressed up with butterflies.

She also made these pretty bows for each of the napkins.

The venue itself then helped us kick it up a notch by the beautiful platters for our "munchies"...they were perfect for the forest feel.

One of our branches-bunch served as a wishing tree.  We had hanging tags (cut with the Cricut) for guests to leave special messages for mama-to-be and baby J.

Each guest was also asked to please bring a favorite book for Baby Jimenez's library.  A bookplate was sent with the invites and guests were to bring the filled out bookplate to the shower.  I used my larger xyron machine to create laminated stickers to attach to the books.  I hadn't intended on the lamination, but it worked out for the best because it will help preserve the special note for baby to read in the future.

Another little touch that Sogol had wanted (she had seen it on a blog) was to create little cupcake toppers that were mini children's books.  We didn't have cupcakes at our afternoon tea, but we did have other sweet treats that could be decorated with the mini books.  These were surprisingly easy to make and people were so impressed by them.  I was really tickled at the reaction!

Lastly, we had some fun favors!  One of the hostesses, Regan, took the lead on creating the beautiful favors (Iranian tea and tea infusers because Sogol is Iranian), so my task was to create a tag for each favor bag that would also serve as a place seating.  We wanted to incorporate a nerdy owl (seemed very bookish)...so we ran with this cute little guy.  Also, check out Regan's incredible handwriting on the favor tags.  I honestly thought she had used letter stickers!

It was a blast celebrating our special friend, and these fairy godmothers were honored to work together to shower Sogol with some love. I was battling a cold that weekend and laugh when I look at this picture.  Clearly, I wasn't in a fairy godmother-like mode...otherwise I would have worn a dress too!  ha!

I'm also happy to report that our pretty centerpieces found some homes after the party.  Sogol took some for Baby Jimenez and Dortiz took a bunch for baby Mia's bedroom.  Yay!