babies

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Emily's Birth Announcement

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I had a blast creating the invitations and printed items for my dear friend Cari's baby shower. I also had the privilege of creating a Sip n See invitation for Cari and her husband too. Creating a birth announcement for Miss E after she was born was a real treat.

Having gorgeous newborn photos made it all that much more fun. Newborn photography by Infiniti Foto.

I loved filling in all of the stats and features for little Miss M.

For the back I created this photo collage, inspired by one I saw on Minted.com to showcase all of the great photos. I love how it turned out!!

Welcome to the world Emily!! 

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Jackie & Michael's Camping Baby Shower

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My sister, Jackie is pregnant with her first baby I was thrilled to get to plan a baby shower for her along with our mom and our friend Joanna. Jackie and my brother-in-law, Michael wanted a coed baby shower and we took a little time brainstorming ideas for a theme. We decided on a camping theme, but there were a few stipulations. The lumberjack theme is popular right now, but none of us wanted to go that route. So no fake beards, no buffalo plaid, just simple camping with a few "tactical" elements thrown in for Michael. It was pretty hard to figure out, but we managed to sneak in a few.

For the invitation I reworked a birthday invitation I created last year (I'll get it up on the blog someday). 

The insert included where to find their registry and rsvp information.

Never fear, the email address and URL have been changed to protect privacy.

Never fear, the email address and URL have been changed to protect privacy.

I had these printed at Office Depot and I mailed them in Clover envelopes from Paper Source. I actually had most of this stuff printed with Office Depot. It was really easy to upload the files to their website and pick them up from my local store within an hour. I was even able to specify that some be printed onto card stock and some not. It was really, really convenient! 

We started with a sign for the front door (this is the only item where I wasn't thrilled with the print quality):

For the shower itself, my sister was adamant that it be a brunch because she loves breakfast food. So we had donuts, bagels, fruit salad, and an egg/sausage/hashbrown/cheese concoction that our mom has been making for years that she calls "Mountain Woman Breakfast." I made food signs for all of these, including the mimosa bar. 

We also had a big basket full of "s'mores mix" which is a mixture of chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, and Golden Grahams cereal. I don't know why I forgot to take a photo of it!

For table decor, the city my parents live in cleared away some fallen trees and left the wood slices out, free firewood for residents. Score!! We already had a few old lanterns and then we found these little plastic canteens on Oriental Trading. I created a new sticker for them by printing onto full sheet sticker paper. Voile!!

For a favor, we packed up some fixins for s'mores for everyone to take home. I couldn't decide between the two favor tag designs, so I printed some of each. Cello bags and twine came from Amazon.

We also had a station for folks to build their own trail mix. We called it G.O.R.P. when I was a kid, which stands for "good ole raisins and peanuts." Metal buckets and scoops are from Amazon.

To add a "tactical" element to the party, we had the materials and instructions set up so guests could make their own paracord keychain. 

It was only $1.49 to get each page of instructions laminated at Office Depot. Well worth it!

I created some fun signs for a few spots throughout the party venue. This one is my favorite:

Notice the pregnant mama in a few of these?

Bathrooms too!

Wishes for Baby. I love making these for baby showers and first birthdays! I can only imagine that the parents love to read them a year, five years, or more down the road.

We played a rousing round of The Price is Right and guessed the pricing on a bunch of baby items. Considering how much of these things I've bought in recent years, I kind of hoped I'd do better on this!

I'm really proud of how this trio of onesies turned out. I had created three camping-themed designs and I wanted to screen print them onto a few onesies. I wanted navy blue, dark green, and charcoal gray and I wanted them to all be heathered in texture. Apparently that's really not easy to find and definitely not very affordable. Getting them screen printed with my custom design was going to cost between $20 and $27 each. It was simply more than I was willing to spend. One of these days I'll be able to buy a Silhouette Cameo and do it myself, but not today.

I already had these three onesies in plain white. Since I've been dabbling in fabric dyeing, I blended some colors together to get these three. The green and brown onesies were dyed solid and then I added the designs with fabric paint. The space onesie was done with a method called ice dyeing. I wrote up the details on how I did it here. 

We also had a fun obstacle course that involved walking through Legos, changing a diaper, and assembling a breast pump; all for time!

It turned out to be a really relaxed and fun baby shower and I hope my sister and brother-in-law had as much fun as I had. Love you guys!

Julianna's Birth Announcement

Julianna's mommy JoAnna has been a long-time client of mine. We first worked together many years ago on her wedding invitations. Since then, I've been lucky enough to create baby shower invitations, a birth announcement and birthday invitations for her oldest son. Her second baby is here and we're so happy to welcome her to the world!

I have changed their last name to protect privacy.

Welcome Julianna! 

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Melissa & Patrick's Baby Shower

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As if there weren't enough bicycles throughout the decor and printed items at Melissa and Patrick's wedding, we took it a step further with their baby shower, and even added a bike trailer.

We took the same two bicycles that I used on their wedding invitations and I added silhouettes of the two of them riding the bikes and a baby trailer. The result was a super fun design theme for their baby shower and gender reveal.

These were printed at their local Office Depot and they purchased Papaya envelopes from Paper Source.

For this baby shower, we had signs ALL over! First was a sign on the front door of the venue:

They had Burt's Bees lip balm as a party favor, so it made it fun to add the "what will it bee" schtick throughout, but without doing a full-on bumblebee theme.

Guests were encouraged to mark their guesses on the board for the gender of the baby. I guessed girl, but was really second-guessing myself. Even on a chalkboard that was printed on paper, it served well as a real chalkboard.

Guests were also encouraged to fill out a card leaving their wishes for baby. I LOVE these for a wonderful keepsake for both the parents and the baby.

Rather than have a guestbook, we did this thumbprint tree instead. This is the same tree I created for Patrick and Melissa's wedding, including the two bicycles leaning against the tree trunk. I flipped it around and added a tricycle and the Dr Seuss quote. It's one of my all-time favorite quotes:

Today you are you, and that's truer than true.
There is no one alive who is youer than you.

This was such a FUN sign to make. We looked up as many gender-predicting folk tales that we could find and asked Melissa to do all of them. I love the mix of results. 

Melissa and Patrick created a series of games and deemed them the Baby Shower Olympics. Events included guessing a baby item by feel only, Blindfolded Diaper Changing, Pin the Sperm on the Egg, Bottle Chugging, and a test on the pregnancy duration for multiple animals. 

Participants kept track of their own points with the scoresheets we created and the top three winners won a gold, silver, or bronze "medal" that Patrick made by glueing a bottle nipple to a medal and spraying it with metallic paint. 

The mimosa bar just made the day that much more fun. By the way, POG mixed with champagne is a stellar combination (POG = passion fruit, orange and guava juice)!

This was such a fun and entertaining baby shower, and I really love how Patrick and Melissa made a huge effort to make it a fun event for both men and women among their friends and family. Just like their wedding, their baby shower was truly a reflection of their personalities. Congratulations!!