Kate's baby shower

I have been excited to host Kate's baby shower since long before she was even pregnant - and wouldn't you know it, the timing of her pregnancy and mine meant that I'd be about 8 months pregnant when her baby shower happened (well, really it probably could have happened later, but since I REALLY wanted to at least help host, it worked out to host it in early February). Because of this, I knew my work would have to be focused on the front end of the shower versus the actual day of. I have hosted a few other baby showers too - I really do enjoy it but knew at 8 months pregnant I'd probably have a bit less energy than normal!

Invitations

Pinterest really does make hosting events for people a lot easier, and more fun - I scoured Kate's board for more details on what she was thinking for her boys' nursery. Since we do talk daily, I have a pretty good sense of her likes and dislikes and really wanted to find an invitation that was PERFECT for her - I found what I was looking for on etsy, of course! The Dimple Prints shop had a ton of great baby shower invitations, and was very willing to customize it to exactly the color and pattern combination I wanted. This is what I came up with, and I LOVE it! (despite Kate's twit the day before she got the invitation saying she was "so over chevron" or something like that ;)

So this would have been delightful if I could have actually printed out the invitation to have it look LIKE THAT - as in the colors being light aqua and a mustard yellow. But no. I tried 2 different printing places, had them customize it as much as they could, and printed out at home too and it always looked off. Sigh. This of course resulted in an ugly cry when I saw the first round come back. Because I was getting short on time, the invitations went out looking more blue and green, but I emailed Kate the original so that she could know that my intentions were good, even if the execution sucked :)

Cloth Diaper Cake

My next big project was constructing a diaper cake - but with cloth diapers. Despite really not liking most cutesy things, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for diaper cakes, and knew Kate needed a ton of cloth diaper related paraphernalia, so I decided why not have that be my gift to her and also help with the decor to boot. I did some searches on pinterest for "modern diaper cake" since I knew Kate also would not want anything cutesy, but ended up pretty much following this tutorial on alphamom exactly.

Annie helped!

I really should have taken some photos of the process because it is slightly different with cloth diapers. I used 3 packages of the prefolds Kate had registered for on amazon. I also got a package of washcloths from Target too. I folded each prefold in thirds the long way, then rolled each side in until they met at the middle and secured it with a rubber band. I found if I just rolled each one all the way up it got a bit too thick.  You can see on the bottom right of the above photo how the prefolds were rolled. I didn't end up using all the prefolds, but I THINK I used more than 2 packages... the washcloths probably weren't needed though. The top "tier" was just one prefold wrapped around the top of the champagne bottle. I liked wrapping it in tissue paper, since the prefolds are more of an ivory - I thought it made it look a lot more streamlined. I finished it off with plain ribbon in Kate's nursery colors and decorated with Sophie the giraffe - another registry item. For her actual "to open" gift, I gave her a few cloth diaper covers. 

The main event

My only real contribution to the day was bringing my most very favorite muffins - I did get cupcake liners in Kate's colors as well, from Bake it Pretty - to make them a bit more exciting :) Kate's mother-in-law and sister-in-law were the other hostesses, and handled the rest of the food and decor. It was a great party, and we all enjoyed celebrating the upcoming arrival of Kate's twin boys! Here are a few photos from the day!

Color coordinating M&Ms!

Those are croissants from scratch, made by the papa-to-be Kyle

From one photographer (Nicki) to another!