When we got started, Christy pointed me to some blogs she had found online dedicated entirely to baby showers, the one I visited the most being an awesome site called bumpsmitten.com. They had so many cute themes and ideas...and Christy, I can tell you the truth now, this blog TERRIFIED me. :) How in the world was I ever going to give her a shower that could live up to these? Everything home-crafted and cutesy, unique and inventive themes not readily found in the party store (theme-in-a-bag, anyone?)...if I could even come up with the stuff in my head (and getting started, that seemed like a HUGE if), when was I going to find the time to do it? And execution of cutesy, home-crafted theme items is a whole other ball game than an image in my head. I won't lie to you, Christy--I had my doubts. People kept saying to me that I was SO crafty, and SO creative, and they were sure everything was going to turn out SO great. I'm glad someone had faith all along.
We had talked about a couple of potential themes, so that I knew whatever I picked she would like it, even if WHICH theme it would be was a surprise. Honestly, I don't even remember what else we talked about, because as soon as Christy said she thought elephants would be cute, I was sold. (It's football season, y'all. I think about it all summer in preparation. Scratch that, my brain never totally leaves football season mode. But in these last few months of withdrawal, I do get a little extra rabid anytime I see something crimson or houndstooth in a store. Anyway...) But somehow, it didn't sit right with me. I couldn't just call elephants a "theme" and throw shakers everywhere like a tailgate party. (But I do own pink shakers from gymnastics meets, and the party store has houndstooth napkins, so for a while that route was tempting.)
Finally, one day I was looking at bumpsmitten.com and came across a post for a shower where the theme was "B is for Baby" (here's the link if anyone's curious where the inspiration came from...or if you just want to see a cute baby shower) and it hit me. E could be for elephants. E could be for Eden. E could be for expecting. And thus, the theme was born.
The first thing I did was go to a Scrabble cheat website (which I never ever use for Words With Friends...) to look up words that started with E, and made a list of everything I thought I could incorporate into the shower. There are a lot of E foods, though they by and large didn't go with baby showers (enchiladas?), but the more generic Eating also starts with E. I wrote down a lot of things, but in the end narrowed it down to Eating, Embellish (for the headbands and onezies), Enjoy (favors), Encourage (advice for the mom-to-be), and the original E for Expecting, to cover the whole theme of the shower. Those five things got painted into signs to be hung in the appropriate area of my house.
You know, I legitimately thought I had taken individual pictures of all five signs until just now. Oh well. You get the idea.
The next, possibly most pressing, order of business was getting the invitations. I don't know if you know this, but invitations are shockingly expensive. And I hated to spend so much money on invitations I wasn't even that crazy about. Cue friend-who-majored-in-graphic-design-in-college. So thanks to Ryan (and the "upload your own file!" option on Vistaprint) I got the perfect invitations, cute AND theme-inspired!
I also thought I had an actual file of this on-hand, with the front and back. Clearly, I should have pre-planned for this blog a little better. Moving on.
By the time the invitations came in, I had purchased, used for a short time, and subsequently broken my paper punch (which, by the way, I can now tell you was the shape of a tiny elephant--here are the toothpicks that originally inspired the purchase of the paper punch, and still for sale, might I add; probably a good idea, since this idea clearly falls into the "don't try this at home" category), and since the punch did NOT magically repair itself as I had hoped after my last blog, I had a bit of a problem. Less confetti that I wanted and a lot of leftover paper. But whatever crafty gene everyone else thought I had kicked in, and I started making little square confettis out of the paper I had cut the tiny elephants out of, and all the printed paper that I'd been most excited to use but hadn't gotten around to before the punch broke.
What was I going to do with them? Honestly, when I started making them, I had no clue, I just knew they had to be good for something. Fortunately, as it happened, I could do a lot with these little squares. They ended up on the favor boxes I bought at the Dollar Tree (score!), suddenly transforming them into theme favor boxes...
After all that, everything else decoration wise was pretty easy. It did all come ready-made from the party store, but plain hot pink decor, no pre-made themes or loud "it's a girl!" banners. Just a healthy sprinkling of hot pink, and stuffed elephants from mine and my mom's personal collection. Christy asked me where I'd found so many elephants. Answer: "upstairs". Seriously, you should have known. ;) And the elephants are just sitting in/on layers of hot pink tulle--so easy!
All in all, everything turned out even better than I'd hoped (when WILL I learn to have a little faith in myself? Maybe I'll make a career out of party planning yet...), and I think everyone had a good time. Plus Christy & Eden made out like bandits in the present department! ;) And, if you're wondering, my outfit was a big hit, too. Can you really go wrong with neon pink heels for a girl baby shower? I think not.
So there you have it--Christy and Eden's "E is for Expecting" shower!
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