Since this was a second baby shower, I wanted it to be more like a kid-friendly tea party than a traditional guess-how-big-Mama’s-belly-is/gift bingo/grown up shower. I also wanted it to be girly but not princessy, cute but not over the top, and to involve lots and lots AND LOTS of food. I actually stumbled into a nursery rhyme theme after reading Little Evan his favorite Mother Goose book for the bazillionth time (he specifically requests the “this little piggy” and “one, two, buckle my shoe” pages because they involve being tickled at the end). “Boy,” I thought to myself, “there sure are a lot of baked goods in these nursery rhymes!”

And thus a theme was born.

I thought it would be super easy to just pick up some Mother Goose craft paper & fabric, grab a couple books from my shelf and be done with it but it turns out nursery rhymes are soooo 1900’s and not very popular anymore so I had to improvise. But it all ended up coming together really well and only involved three trips to the craft store and two to Target with a day of online shopping thrown in for fun.

(click on collages to see them bigger – I know a lot of stuff is kind of too small to read but trust me, it’s better than posting them all individually)

Decorations:

Adorable book-themed invites from Tiny Prints (free tip: ask around Twitter for discount codes – sometimes people give them to you and the invitations you thought were too expensive end up being just right.)

Baby Girl diaper cake done by the VERY talented Joanna of Raising Madison. She was a doll to work with and even made the cake fit my theme with the Farmer in the Dell animals.

Collection of geese (aka ducks I just called geese) on the mantle from Goodwill.

I found the adorable customizable pennants and gift tags in hedgehogstudio’s shop on Etsy for only $5. I used the pennants (printed in 2 different sizes) to make “Welcome!” banners and one over the mantle that says “Rock-a-bye Baby”. I used the gift tags as book marks for the nursery rhyme books I passed out as favors – an INCREDIBLY lucky find in the $1 bin at Target.

My original plan to just scan in pictures of each nursery rhyme from vintage books was cut short when I realized that probably broke about a zillion copyright laws and after a few minutes of trying to find public domain images I was ready to give up. Luckily, Etsy saved the day again with 20 2×2 vintage nursery rhyme illustrations for only $2.50. I cut them out & glued them to ribbon to hang behind the food table and attached the ones that matched the food to the food labels.

The tablecloths are all fabric ordered from Fabric.com.

The sparkly butterflies were in the 80% off Halloween clearance at Michael’s.

Yarn wreath made by me: it’s yarn scraps wrapped around a styrofoam form. Easiest thing ever – but REALLY time consuming to wrap all that yarn.

The blessing tree was an idea I saw mentioned on Ohdeedoh a few weeks ago and stuck with me – I used the same small book of craft paper (called Nana’s Nursery, bought at Joann’s) for the hanging tags on the tree as for the food labels and the backing on the nursery rhymes I scattered around as decorations.

The books on the mantel are a combination of my own from when I was a kid, my mom’s from when SHE was a kid, a few I found at Goodwill and one special moving-picture book I bought especially for Baby Sandy.

The children loved the coloring book pages I found online and printed out, along with my box of 200 crayons. Many of them took their beautiful creations home as souvenirs.

And I just can’t go without pointing out the tea and the plates/napkins are in (a tisket a tasket) green and yellow baskets. MY THEME WAS SO COHESIVE.

Food:

Menu:

Little Jack Horner Thumb Print Cookies (declared the most delicious thumb print cookies ever by all my guests & made by E so obviously not super hard – I think the secret was we used boysenberry jam because I couldn’t find plum – recipe here)

Little Boy Blueberry Muffins (recipe from Tasty Kitchen – also made by E & his dad and also DELICIOUS)

Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater Pumpkin Cookies (recipe from Amy @ A Good Life)

That’s What Little Girls Are Made of Sugar Cookies (bought the nursery rhyme cookie cutters on Ebay)

This Little Piggy Had Roast Beef Sandwiches

This Little Piggy Had None Cucumber Tea Sandwiches

Humpty Dumpty Deviled Eggs

Mary Mary Quite Contrary Garden Veggies

Jack and Jill Went Up The Hill To Fetch a Pail of Watermelon & Fruit

Peter Piper Pickled Peppers

Three Blind Mice Cheese and Crackers

Jack-a-dandy Sugar Candy (aka Smarties & Starlight mints)

Polly Put The Kettle On Tea

Punch and Judy Party Punch

And, because I am AWESOMELY AWESOME, I found a nursery rhyme that included wine: one of the middle verses of Old Mother Hubbard.

Erin (Wedding Erin for those who know what I mean) made this entire cake from scratch – the cake, the frosting, the fondant and the decorations. One layer was strawberry and the other was vanilla that she made with a no-crap actual vanilla bean. It was DELICIOUS. I’ve stuffed myself with cake every day since the shower and we STILL have some left over. I’m totally blaming Erin when my doctor announces I’ve gained 15 pounds at my next appointment.

Friends (really the very best friends anyone could ask for):

More than half the photos (and all the good ones) taken by Erin of Open Shutter Photography. She’s not only my BFF, she’s INCREDIBLY talented with both her camera and Photoshop and can make even a 35 week pregnant Sasquatch look pretty adorable. (You can like her on Facebook here)

Exhibit A:

Headband from TwentyFiveDesign, sweater is at Target RIGHT NOW (not even maternity)

Thank you again bunches and bunches and bunches to The Erins, my in-laws, and my friends who came. I hope you all had as much fun as I did. Oh and if you ever want to pay me gobs of money (or let me SPEND gobs of your money) to plan a party, just let me know. I’m available.

If you’ve read all the way to the end of this, you deserve a piece of cake. Come over and I will TOTALLY give you one right now.

If you’ve ever read my blog before, you might have noticed I sort of like planning and organizing small intimate casual parties for my kid or my friends.

So I decided to follow in the footsteps of my friend Audrey and throw a Baby Celebration Party for Baby Girl. Not a shower, because throwing yourself a party where you basically say “OH HAI, BRING ME PRESENTS” is unnecessary and kind of rude for a second baby (in my opinion), but I still wanted my daughter to know her pending arrival was just as exciting and celebration-worthy as her brother’s.

Of course, being 35 weeks pregnant AND the mother of a toddler is fairly exhausting. And the morning of the shower I woke up feeling like death warmed over. Really, seriously, painfully awful (in pregnancy related ways, not in contagious diseases sort of ways) and after rolling sugar cookie dough for only a few minutes I was almost in tears thinking about how much I still had to do before my guests showed up.

THANK GOD my in-laws and two of my very best friends Erin (from the wedding) and Erin (who wrote a guest post for me here and let me post pictures of her kid here) were staying with us for the party, because they – along with my amazing husband – did ALL the work for me. Even the night before the shower when I was still planning to do it myself they helped out stringing pennants and gluing craft paper. And of course Wedding Erin spent a ZILLION HOURS on an amazing – and incredibly delicious – custom themed cake. I, on the other hand, mostly sat in a chair and pointed at things.

(As a side note, I now know E is not only capable of following recipe instructions without my standing over his shoulder, but he can BAKE LIKE A MOFO. The thumb print cookies he made were ridiculously tasty – not a single one left over. He may live to regret letting that slip.)

It was especially nice of my in-laws and The Erins to help after I didn’t have blankets, pillows, food for breakfast or time to clean my rather disgusting bathroom before they got here. I’m not sure there was ever a time I was LESS prepared to have house(or any kind of)guests in my life. I used to be the hostess who not only had guest towels that coordinated with each room’s decor, but little baskets of toiletries, soaps, toothbrushes and tea waiting for them just in case they forgot or needed them. This time I barely got up off the couch to say “Hey thanks for coming!” I didn’t even manage to sort of clean up the new master bedroom before my party guests came over even though I KNEW I would end up giving a tour. So all my friends saw my literal dirty laundry.

As as far as having the new nursery done before the shower? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

So in the end everything was awesomely awesome and I am really glad I decided to shower myself, even if it was a little overwhelming.

Of course, 50% of the reason I even HAD the party was so I could show pictures of my cute theme and decorations here on the blog. I promise to have those up soon. It will be TOTALLY WORTH coming back to check them out. That is, if you like that sort of thing. I apologize in advance for about a gazillion pictures if you don’t.

Monday:

We started the week our favorite way

We even made it to (outside) Stroller Strides at Ft. Shantok Park

It was nice enough for some good quality swinging too

Tuesday:

I saw this. I bought this. It was disappointing. I need some regular egg nog.

Wednesday:

I got an amazing box in the mail. My friend Jen (from high school!) made me these for Baby Sandy. Are they adorable or what?!

Thursday:

We went to Stroller Strides (again!) and after class Baby Evan played on the Richard Scarry ride. He is skeptical of Lowly Worm.

My new (non-deffective) rocker came in at Babies R Us. Little Evan thought we also needed a new exersaucer.

Friday:

My BFF Erin came up with her son and I practiced pushing two around the grocery store. For the record, this cart SUCKS.

And then we left the babies (with E) to go pick up wine at our local vineyard. Sadly, all the wine was for my friends and not me.

Hey look! Amy from A Good Life was nice enough to make the linky code for me, so now it’s a hop! That means if you put this code in your post (on the HTML page) everyone’s links show up for everyone so it’s easy to check them all out. Please link up if you did a week in iPhone (or camera phone or whatever) photos! (p.s. I am shockingly internet clueless, so you might have to actually go over to Amy’s to get the code. I…don’t really know. Am not smart.)

The other day I saw a comment on Twitter that said something like “Before you post a craft tutorial or idea on your blog, always Google to make sure someone else hasn’t already posted one.”

And then my head exploded.

To be clear, the tweet wasn’t directed at me. Crafting is only a teeny tiny part of my blog and definitely not my area of expertise. I have never gotten a nasty email or comment about the originality of my projects. And I try very, very hard to keep it that way. There is no reason at all I should have taken the kind of offense to the remark that caused my brains to splatter all over the wall behind me.

I understand that people copying each others work is a big problem in blog land. There was the cooking magazine that reprinted a blogger’s post without her permission and then told her “Well the internet is free, so technically we can print anything we want! Plus, we edited your crappy writing so much, YOU should really pay US!” (No, really, this just happened.) And just this week Jill found her recent craft tutorial on a site that claims it “collects” posts from across the internet and republishes them – without giving her byline. But they’re doing it to help you! You’ll get tons of traffic! From this site no one has ever heard of and has no valid contact info!

I also know stealing someone’s design/craft can be a huge problem for handmade businesses, since there’s really no way to copyright something like a ruffle or a rosette. That’s not cool. Don’t rip off creative people you admire – SUPPORT them.

BUT. Posting a recipe for, say, zucchini bread even though there are already a zillion recipes online for zucchini bread is not plagiarism. Neither is posting a how-to on a ribbon mobile or felt flowers or using an empty frame as a whiteboard, although if you Google any of those you get dozens and dozens (hundreds)(sometimes thousands) of responses. Demanding no one ever use an idea someone else has had is like saying “OK, Mommy bloggers, since I’ve already read posts about cloth diapers, potty training, making your own baby food, pooping while giving birth and cute kids, ALL THOSE THINGS are off limits.” If we limited the internet to only 100% original thoughts it probably wouldn’t exist. Neither would most books, movies, art, music, etc. Have you ever read the New Testament? Some of those dudes totally tell the same stories, even though they were told before!!

How about instead of assuming you are such a special snowflake all YOUR ideas are one-of-a-kind and it’s everyone else who’s stealing we agree to some rules for polite blogging?

1. If you are “inspired” by someone else’s idea, link to them in your post.
2. If you flat out USE someone else’s tutorial, link to them in your post, and maybe stick to just posting pictures instead of your own “how-to”.
3. Changing the NAME of a recipe is not the same as inventing a new recipe. You have to actually modify the ingredients/instructions to make it new.
4. Use common sense – don’t be a douchecanoe. When in doubt, link link link.

But for the record, the internet is a really huge place. I promise there is more than enough room for everyone’s yarn wreath tutorials (coming soon to bebehblog!)

Like I said, I didn’t really need to get so pissed off about this – I’m just having a pissed off sort of day and angry blogging is the pregnant woman’s equivalent of drinking a bottle of wine.