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!

Sewing Printable

  I've been quite busy lately planning and executing a baby shower. Since this is the first real party I've ever planned (birthday parties for myself when I was a teen don't count) I went a little wild with it. I took photos, but since the shower was thrown in a very low-light environment, they are going to take a whole lot of editing to be viewable.

  In the meantime, and since I miss my sewing time, perhaps you'd like a copy of this printable I created while I was learning to use Illustrator a few months ago. PDF is available here.

  Mine is simply taped to the wall with some gold-and-white washi tape, but it would work well in a frame too. Hope you like it!

Thanks for stopping by,

Pink Eyelet Dress And 4th Birthday

  The whole time I was sewing the pink eyelet outfit for my baby niece, Booper was standing by admiring it. So for her birthday yesterday, I made her a matching one!

  There are a couple small differences, and one is the skirt... I made it as full as I could eke out of the remaining fabric in one piece, but I would have liked it to have more gathers.

  I tucked in a simple hair-bow as well, using a scrap of eyelet, some tiny pink satin ribbon and pink ric-rac, and some white satin ribbon, all tied, glued, and sewn together and glued atop a clip.

  Both were well-received. =)

  It turned out longer than I'd intended, which is probably due to a measuring error, but I still can't pinpoint where I messed up.

  I used the sloper I created in preparation for sewing her flower-girl dress last year, sewed up a couple of quickie muslins (removing the darts in the back in favor of sloped side seams), and ended up with something that fits quite well, especially considering how much this girl has grown since last year!

  The hardest part of this dress, besides hand-sewing the waist seam of the too-sturdy lining,

  was trying to match up all the seams, ribbons, and top-stitching right.

  I love the result though! And so does Booper. =)

  I don't think I mentioned before that this fabric is from Wal-mart. It's really flimsy, but once it's underlined it is plenty thick enough... as long as it doesn't get caught on anything! The only other pink eyelet I could find locally was almost $20 a yard and had a circular pattern instead of a floral one, so I didn't want that one.

  I was running low on white fabrics too... I had to use three different types on the inside of this! For the skirt and waistband, I used leftover backing from an old duvet, the same fabric I used for my triple-ruffle skirt.

For the bodice, I used scraps left from the skirt portion of the baby eyelet dress, a thick cotton. And for the underlining, the very last of my white muslin, which I seem to use a lot more than I'd expected to.

  I didn't think to pre-shrink the ribbon at the waist, because I had no problems with it in the baby version, but when I pressed the waistband on this dress the ribbon shrank a little and made the waistband bubble a little. It's not super-noticeable, but I do wish I had thought of that.

  I also made a cake for my darling daughter, who is getting so old.  I used a boxed mix with homemade frosting, and frosted it with simple rosettes.

  I first saw this technique on girl. Inspired. and I think it came out beautifully. It was really simple and quick to do (a little less than 30 minutes total frosting time, including the crumb coat), in spite of the fact that I forgot to mark my circles first and my frosting was just a tiny bit too thin. My husband was even impressed. =)

  I also gave Booper the one gift that she'd been hoping to get for months, the one that makes absolutely no sense in parched Arizona: an umbrella.

  This is a store-bought umbrella which turned out to be unfortunately flimsly (ALL of the ribs are broken, already) and dangerous (painful scratch on this child's eyelid) but which she totally loved.

  And that is how we celebrated our funny, talkative, curious, sweet, energetic little girl for her 4th birthday. She also had a lovely visit and gifts from one Grandma and Aunt, and a beautiful outfit and shoes (which she is wearing in these photos) from another Grandma and Aunt. =)

  Thanks for stopping by,

Experimental Tee Dress

  This dress came about because I was wondering about full skirts, no waist seam, and knit fabric.

  I was pretty sure that if the skirt portion had no curved waist seam that the fullness would all tend towards the side seams, so I decided to test it out and see.

  With only 5 pieces (front, back, sleeves, neckband) this sewed up really quickly. I used a tee pattern for Booper that I'd previously drafted, cutting it off at the waist and adding a very flared skirt. The sleeves and hem are finished with a serged lettuce edge, but since this knit barely stretches, it didn't ruffle much.

  I'm not really happy with the neckband... this was as short as I could get it and still have it fit the neckline, and it doesn't lay flat. I could have made it narrower.... that might have helped. =)

  As I suspected, you can't really tell that the skirt is full when it's wearer is standing still, which would probably look great for an adult but isn't my favorite look for an almost-four year old. Luckily, Booper doesn't stand still much.

  She loves this dress! I'm glad I made it for her even if it's not quite what I was envisioning. =) The knit is from Girl Charlee a couple months ago and is lightweight but barely stretchy. The exact knit I bought is all gone, but this new one has a very similar print.

 I have a grey corduroy dress for Booper done too, and am debating adding a sash... that one should be up soon! =)

Thanks for stopping by,