SURPRISE! Baby Shower

The sweets table (handcrafted sweets..personalized favors)

Today we celebrated the baby with a beautiful baby shower hosted by my sister, she must have planned most of this with my mom and other sister without letting it out of the bag once because it was a surprise for a while until a certain somebody said "see you next week, at the shower!". Anyway, I'm not a good receiver of surprises but I realize that even though I had an idea there was an event, the surprise became more about the extent to which she went to to make it really quite beautiful for us (me and the little one inside). It was that, that made it a great surprise, every detail was thought of to match my personality (I love orange..my daughters room is partially orange, my wedding was partially orange..) and I was afraid I was fading to beige.

I love throwing parties because I like themes, decorating and making little gifts but on the other had I dislike parties because I get stressed out about if people can make it or not, if they find it to be important enough take the time out to attend. I will say that we found out over the last few years that May is an awfully busy month for celebrations especially the first weekend of month of May is graduation and First Holy Communion but we also know quite a few people with birthdays at this time as well and then theres sports..people seem to think their kids will become the next Michael Phelps or something so they dare not miss one practice game or it might profoundly impact or alter their kids future stardom. 

Anyway, The party yesterday, had enough people there, people that came to support us because they genuinely care about us and that was just enough for me. My mother, 2 sisters (one of which is also expecting her first baby!) and nieces were there, my cousin (close like a sister), her husband and three little boys came from DC, my father in-law, sister in law with her two little boys, my neighbors Carli and Daisy came along with their sons..and more. It was really nice. 

Cake and cookies (handcrafted by my sister!)

Every detail complemented the party, the sweets table had a lovely cake (vanillas with chocolate filling) with buttercream frosting, with matching heart-shaped sugar cookies, white chocolate morsels, cream/orange M&M candies and fruit bowl. It also had these adorable little favors, personalized with my name and shower date and a cute little elephant etched into it. She also made these adorable little flower arrangements with Gerbera daisies. 

The lunch/dinner table had a variety of salads, rice, baked scallops with mango salsa, bbq and jerk chicken, lasagna, little toast with the crust cut off ( love!) and lots more. It was really great to catch up with everyone, and the kids had great time too. Arielle was so happy to have all her cousins in one place at the same time and since the party was at my moms house, they were all right at home on the playground and playing football with the dads at the party!

We also played a diapering game which was really funny, we discovered my sisters husband (whose about to be a daddy..) has no idea how to diaper babies or in this case rabbits, dolls etc. and that my husband seems to be a speed diaperer! He won a $25 gift card for diapering the most dolls in 45 seconds. It was rather comical but he takes these kinds of things seriously.

We received so many gifts for this little girl; I thought we had all we needed but the gifts (mostly from a registry I set up but intended as a wish list of sorts for myself to buy along the way) were all really great, we received a beautiful moses basket, baby monitor, babycook, Organic towels, first aid kits, tons of onsies, little colorful summer outfits, two car seats and more. Arielle even got some gifts which really made her feel great. At the end of the night, after everyone had gone home, the kids fell asleep watching the Smurfs movie. I am really thankful to my sister for hosting the party, it was a  really nice  thing to do and  allowed me to really celebrate the fact that in a few weeks we (the three of us) will have a new little person in our house but also that this little one has a place within a much larger and very loving family. she's an extremely lucky little girl and we cant wait to meet her.