Oh Baby! Hosting a Baby Shower

Hosting a baby shower kinda reminded us of planning for the wedding.  There was tons to do and great reasons to try things that I've never tried before, and there was fun to be had. :)

As any sister might want, I wanted my sister's baby shower to be spectacular, because she's awesome and deserves nothing less. Unfortunately, there was a lot for me to learn since I'm not really what people would consider a "baby" person.  Which is why I'm grateful for the help of great friends and family who helped with many aspects of the baby shower to make it spectacular.  I could not have done it without them.

Anyway, I thought I'd share some things from my sister's dragon themed baby shower.

First were the invitations.  I decided to go with one of the many diaper invitations that I've seen on the interwebs.  I really didn't want to cut each one individually however, because there were going to be 60 invites created (we have a large extended family).  So, I used blue card stock, drew the design on the top of a stack of them, taped the whole stack together with some masking tape, and used my scrollsaw to cut them all.  A few things I learned from this:
1.  I really need to practice straight lines with my scroll saw (sigh).
2.  Be ready to assume that the top and bottom card stock will be ruined.  So whatever number of cuts you want, add 2.
3.  If you're really good (which I'm not, but maybe with more practice), this is an awesome way to cut a ton of paper to a design in one shot (can we say Christmas cards?).

The front of the cards had slits so that the tabs folded into them, closing up the diaper into a neat little package.  We added the buttons and the ribbon, and my personal favorite, the dragon tail (attached via a brad, so it swung a little).

In the inside of the card, we glued (tip: use stick glue, not craft glue) a printout of the shower information.   I don't have a picture of the envelop, but it had a cool castle printed onto them to add to the theme.

Next, I found some examples of fill-in cards online, and replicated them for motherly advice and wishes for the new prince.  We had a book donation (listed in the invite), with a raffle.  Each book received got a raffle ticket and we called the raffle number afterwards for a fun prize.  The two castles serving as book ends were two wooden bird houses (bought from Michaels), painted and with bags of aquarium rocks inside for weight (we'll figure out something better later).  I created feather quills (pens) for people to use to fill up the fill-in cards and the book donation removable labels.  Aside from the fill-in cards and book donation/raffle, one of the popular games we played was Gift Bingo (cards made by Emily).

Some of the decorations for the party.
1.  A cupcake tower of diaper favors.  We folded and pinned small squares of fabric into diapers, wrapped some jordan almonds or mints into a bit of tulle, and stuck it inside the diapers.
2.  A coat of arms researched and created by my talented husband which has the phrase "Consilio Et Animis" meaning "By wisdom and Courage."
3.  A diaper castle that I built with a working drawbridge. I used wipes packages for the fillers inside, a couple of bottles to hold the book roof up, a sewn receiving blanket for the base, and some washcloths to cover the cardboard drawbridge.
4.  Some really awesome soft fabric blocks made by Emily, my sister's BFF.
5.  We also used all the onesies for the onesie decorating activity for more decorations (see them hanging in the background).
6.  There were also a lot of balloons and crepe paper, and some store bought puffs, and a yard sign (and probably other things I'm forgetting).

One of the many new things I learned during this experience was learning to work with fondant. To me fondant is kinda like working with clay.  You can use tools to shape things and you can use a dab of water to put them together (not that you'd need to do that with clay). I found these year of the dragon cupcake toppers on a pinterest post.  The tutorial was perfect.  I made the dragon toppers a few days ahead of time and let them air dry.  We ordered a plain cake from Vons with the words "Welcome Baby" printed on, and before the party, we positioned the toppers right in. :)

One of the fun activities that we did for the shower were decorating onesies.  For this, we needed a lot of onesies (tip: get varying sizes (0-18m) so that the baby can use them for the year), fabric with Heat'n Bond Lite Iron-on Adhesive already on the back (ready to be ironed onto the onesie), lots of stencils for designs, fabric pens, cardboard (so pens don't bleed to the other side of the onesie), an iron and ironing board.  We bought a cheap clothesline and hung the onesies up with some wooden clothespins (that my sister glued fabric yo-yos to).  There were a lot of really creative onesie designs.  The cutie pi one was mine. :)

We also set up a photobooth.  We had a few onesies against the backdrop for decorations. Here's Elmer trying out the photobooth.

Lastly, we had a Baby Jeopardy competition.  Here's the board the Emily made.  Everyone had a blast with that game.

Hopefully these have helped you gain some ideas for any baby shower you happen to host in the future.

Quilting Adventures

In the last few weeks I've decided to try a little quilting.  Quilting is something that I've always wanted to try, but have never really found the opportunity to try it, til now.

It started out with my friend asking me if I knew if there was a service that one can bring quilt squares to get assembled.  Her idea was that she was going to have her bible study class to decorate squares and to make a quilt for a fellow teacher/friend that is going to have a baby.  Since I've been thinking about trying my hand at quilting again and since I had a perfect quilt to make for my sister who will be having a baby soon, I went for it.  I went with a simple square checkered pattern and used flannel.  I used one piece of flannel for the backing and basically folded it to the front for the binding.

Here's my very first quilt.

Anyway, my friend decided to do an alphabet quilt by attaching the letters using heat and bond adhesive, and doing a blanket stitch with some fray check.  She had her students work on the blanket stitch for the letters.  They turned out awesome.  She gave me all of the fabric and I did the sewing to assemble the squares.  The front were squares of flannel with cotton letters attached.  The back was fleece, and the binding was flannel.  I got to learn how to blind-stitch for the binding.  :)  Overall, the quilt was pretty fun to make.  Here are some pictures:

Some tips that we learned:

1.  Youtube really does have everything. :)  I found lots of videos on blind stitching there, and my friend found lots of videos on the blanket stitching there.  If you want to learn something, check there first.

2.  Wash and iron your flannel before you cut and sew anything that will have to be washed.  Apparently, flannel shrinks quite a bit. If you're gonna make quilt squares, you don't want them to change size unexpectedly in a wash.

3.  Use those Joann's coupons because they can save you quite a bit.

Next thing I want to try??? Rag quilting.  Who doesn't love a blanket that gets softer as it ages and gets washed. :)

Crocheted: Happy Baby Blanket

So, I like to collect those little project pages that stores like Joann's and Michael's usually have near the yarn aisles.  Most times you can find them and more online by just visiting the project sites for the stores.  Anyway, this is one I picked up a while ago.  Finally had the opportunity to try it out when I found out my friend was preggers.  Anyway, I went to work on it, and with much frustration (all due to me), I managed to finish it.  

The blanket itself, is very easy to crochet, mainly using double crochets throughout the project.  The frustration in my part was due to the fact that the yarn I had wasn't enough to make it to the end -- and I couldn't find the yarn at the store anymore. Grrr...   I also made the mistake of using both ends of the yarn skein to work with a two yarns for the blanket -- this is actually what made me run out of yarn.  To resolve this, I ended up unraveling the entire blanket (or at least half of it which was where I realized I was going to run out) and start over and mix the colored yarn with white.

The outcome turned out to be better than I expected.  The white gave the color just a lighter hue, perfect for a new baby girl to enjoy.  Here's the pattern for it. Yup, I found the project sheet online. 

So... lessons learned.

1.  Buy the amount of yarn that you're going to need all at the same time.

2.  Don't use a skein from both ends unless your project is surely gonna fit the skein.

By the way, if you're new to crocheting or wanna give it a try check out this book.  It's how I learned. :)

Happy Crocheting!

Crocheted Bubble Baby Blanket

Last weekend was my cousin's baby shower. She's due in Feb and will be having a boy. As a baby shower gift, I decided to surprise her with a hand crocheted baby blanket for the newcomer. I found this pattern from a slew of patterns on a website aptly named crochet patterns central. Tons and tons of crochet patterns there. You should definitely check it out if you like to crochet. Due to a copyright issue, I can't republish the pattern here so you'll just have to click on the link to get to it (don't worry, it's free).

What I like about this pattern is the simplicity, the quickness, and the beautiful design at the end of it all. Below's a picture of the one I crocheted for my cousin. It didn't take me 3 hours like the pattern said... probably double that time, but I'm a slow crocheter. In the one for my cousin, I followed the pattern almost to the tee, with the same type of yarn, the same size hook, and holding two yarns at the same time. It did save me a lot of time doing it this way because each row was almost an inch in height, it seemed. I have also done a few others in the past holding only one yarn and using thinner baby yarn. The outcome came out nice in both ways, but the single thinner yarn took much much longer to make (one of these are pictured on the very top of this post).



The overall size for this one was about 27" by 30". :-) The proud parents-to-be seem to like it. If you have the time to do it, I think it's a really nice gift to give for a baby shower.

Update: 1/21/09 - My cousin had her baby last night. She and the baby is doing great. :-)