Pink Lace Baby Shower

  I've finally finished editing (as well as they can be edited) the photos from the baby shower I helped throw last week. =) Some photos I re-took at home too. =)

  Since my sister-in-love is pregnant with her first little girl after having twin boys, I wanted the shower to be as girly as possible, so I chose pink and lace as a sort of theme. I was in charge of decorations and desserts, and my mother-in-love sweetly lent her home to the occasion, as well as taking care of the invitations and a lot of the food. My husband's grandma brought some food as well, and my younger sisters-in-love came up with some fun games for us to play. =)

  Here is the dessert bar.... I would have liked to have a backdrop behind it but with an island like this it wouldn't have worked very well. =) There's a lot going on in the background, but I think that is one of the hazards of having a party at someone else's home.

   I made cake pops for the first time.... I think they turned out pretty well! I also made the stand out of florist's foam wrapped with freezer paper and decorated with a punched strip of paper.

  The cake was decorated with rosettes again:

  and labeled with a tag I put together in Inkscape

  I used the classic white birthday cake recipe from this page and German buttercream to frost it. That frosting was amazing! I ended up doubling the sugar, and it was still much less sweet than traditional buttercream, which is what I was hoping for. =) It was pretty hard to decorate with, being mostly butter, and it doesn't crust, but I think it was worth it this time. Oh, and I also used the equivalent weight of the eggs with just egg yolks, since I had them left from making the cake, which made the frosting rather yellow but otherwise worked just fine.

  The cake was pink ombre inside but I'm pretty sure nobody noticed, and this is the best picture I got that day. (Did I mention I was having major trouble getting my camera to focus?)

  I also made strawberry Chex mix (my own recipe, I'll share in a few days)

  Saltwater taffy, from Betty Crocker's cookbook, cherry flavored:

  Mini-strawberry pies and raspberry cream cheese danishes (I used raspberry jam under the filling and colored the icing pink):

  The macarons I bought, rather than making, since I ran out of time to make them and haven't perfected making them yet.

  We also had storebought ice cream in little containers with wooden spoons (affiliate links).

  I also ordered a LOT of white boxes (affiliate link) stenciled about 30 of them, and requested that people take home desserts in them. I have quite a few of the stenciled ones left, and even more that are still plain white. =) I used this silkscreen (affiliate link), but I'm pretty sure I paid a lot less for mine at Michael's.

  On to the drink setup! I made raspberry punch, and requested berry water as well, then my mother-in-love added pink lemonade and orange juice. The punch was pretty simple... I mashed some raspberries through a fine-mesh sieve and lightly sweetened the juice that resulted, then mixed that with Sprite and topped it with a berry sherbert. It tasted amazing though!

  Since this was a brunch party, we had pancakes, baked French toast casserole, mini-quiches, sliced oranges and berries, maple syrup, strawberry and regular whipped cream, cream scones, butter and raspberry butter, and egg casserole. We were going to have bacon and sausage as well, but I think the egg casserole was made instead of those. I made the scones, French toast, raspberry butter, and whipped creams. =)

  For the favors, I made strawberry-scented liquid soap using this recipe as the base, and with glycerin added to help thicken it up. It was super-fatted a little more than I would have preferred, but otherwise was nice.

  The lotion and lip balm were both conglomerations of several different recipes. For the strawberry scent, I originally bought one just for soaping but it smelled really artificial, so I ended up using LorAnn's strawberry flavoring (affiliate link) for a light strawberry scent.

  I made the labels in Inkscape and printed then punched them out of label paper with a scalloped punch (affiliate link). I should have made the circles just a tiny bit bigger or removed the stroke, but I didn't realize that until I'd already printed it on the label paper and I only had one sheet, so I just went with it. The hardest part of the favors was filling all the little bottles and tubes... 72 of them.

  Almost all of the supplies for these were bought at Brambleberry, which will probably leave out part of your order or send you the wrong thing, but which has amazing customer service and will fix the problem immediately when you call them. The only things not from Brambleberry were the flavoring and coloring in the soap and lotion.

  As for decorations! I made doily pomanders, following this tutorial. They were hard to fluff but I love the way they turned out.

  I also made ruffled streamers, following Dana's tutorial.

  Flower pomander balls, following this tutorial with a few substitutions. I couldn't find the hydrangea punch locally and these were a day-before-the-shower addition, so I used the three-in-one punch (affiliate link), and instead of pearl corsage pins I used regular corsage pins found at Hobby Lobby, which were a lot more expensive than I expected.

 I also hung mine with a ribbon as suggested in the tutorial but it was pulling a little loose by the end of the shower... next time I think I'd tie the ribbon on then pin it all the way around. Also, these took FOREVER. I love them anyway. =)

  I made tissue poms too, but mine looked really squashed in the middle following the usual method (I think my tissue paper was too thick) so I ended up cutting the tissue into scalloped-edge circles, scrunching a bit in the center, and gluing them onto a piece of cardstock.

  I made a banner which hopefully will be hung in the little one's room, from ribbon, pink scrapbooking paper, printed cardstock, eyelet lace, and tiny pink ric-rac:

  And finally, I made these adorable babies from diapers, washcloths, socks, and wiggle eyes, and scattered them around the house. I first saw something like these on Pinterest but I failed to pin it:

  And finally, the hit of the party wasn't even something I made, but something I bought. Remember the pink outfit I made for this baby? I packaged the shoes up in one of the stenciled boxes:

  And had some fun with the rest. First, I folded it all in tissue paper with some washi tape:

  then tucked it in the funniest box I've ever seen and wrapped that up:

  Want to see the box? =D

  I found it here (affiliate link) and it was worth every penny. The shocked expressions... priceless. =)

  So, for the first real party I've thrown or helped throw (again, sleepovers as a teen with no decorations and group-made pizza don't count) I think it turned out well. It would have been nice if I could have cleaned things up a bit and if it had been bright enough for good photos, but overall I'm really pleased with the results. And since I had several people suggest that I start a party-planning business, I think I notice the things I don't love a lot more than they did. =)

  I'll be back soon to share more information about the swaddled baby decorations and the strawberry Chex mix recipe. =)

Thanks for stopping by!