Caiden's Baby Shower

When my mom and I decided to throw a baby shower for my sister-in-law, per usual, we got a little too ambitious with the planning. The theme for the shower matched the nursery theme, which was: elephants, clouds, and the colors blue and gray. Our to-do list included quite a bit of handmade crafts, of course, and a menu that we were also hand-making and/or assembling ourselves.

Why do I mention that we were too ambitious? Because I look back now that I'm catching up on posts, and even after all these months, I'm disappointed. I could make excuses. The timing wasn't ideal. There were are lot of upcoming events: Halloween, two other baby showers, and a wedding... all of which I already had other plans and/or craft projects in progress for. We'd also had some scheduling and re-scheduling issues. So unfortunately, there were a lot of things I didn't get to do. Even things I had started and didn't finish in time. In the end, while Shayla and the guests enjoyed themselves, I wish I had accomplished more because a lot of the decorations that were missing would have made a bigger impact with the theme if they had been completed.

I had made a trio of cake stands in varying heights for my brother's wedding cake, and we planned to use them for the shower. But they were originally black, and I wanted them flat white to match the shower colors (and so they would be more reusable in the future), so I repainted them, by hand. In hindsight, spray painting them would have been faster. But I already had a big container of flat white craft paint, which had to be painted in multiple layers... leaving time in between each layer to dry so I wouldn't end up with drips or messy, uneven streaks. Though I did manage to finish them, they took a lot more time than I thought they would.

I had started a handmade banner with the baby's name against cloud cut-outs. But didn't manage to finish stringing it together and didn't get to hang it up at the shower.

I planned on making cloud mobiles to hang from the ceiling. I wanted them to a bit sturdy so that they would outlast the shower and hang in the nursery afterwards. I had a hard time settling on materials. I wanted nice crystals of sufficient size, cut, and quality to really catch the light and sparkle, but had a hard time finding just the right ones. And the cloud shapes themselves that would form the body of the mobiles was also proving difficult, not wanting to sew anything together, or use anything heavy that couldn't support itself. I ended up abandoning the project to make time for finishing up the cake stands.

Even the diaper cake I struggled with. Again, with the dreaded gray color. And again, the adequate portrayal of fluffy white, airy clouds. I settled on cutting up a white feather boa to bring in the fluffiness, but settled on hand cutting clouds from various shades of blue scrapbook paper and layering them over one another to try to add depth. This took the most time and I don't feel like I actually managed to pull off the depth that I wanted. I did find adorable crocheted elephant shoes. Those went on top. I used flowers and ribbons that matched the nursery colors, but weren't anything special or interesting. So overall, not my most inspired nor my best work.

 

My mom, who has been trying her own hand at crafts made some photo frame props that the guests had fun taking pictures with. And luckily, she had borrowed a tower of wrapped boxes from Shayla that her friends had made for the shower they had thrown her the week before. The boxes stacked on top of one another and looked like toy blocks that spelled out the baby's name.

I had seen photos of helium balloons with bits of cotton sitting in them that looked like globes of air containing fluffy clouds. These we attempted the day of the shower, instead of getting the opportunity to experiment ahead of time like I originally intended. A few worked passably well, but balancing the amount of the cotton and the amount of air in the balloons was difficult. Too much cotton and the balloon was too heavy to float. Adversely, too much air and the "cloud" looked like it was lost in the balloon. And some of the colored balloons, even though light in color, weren't clear enough to make out the cotton at all. I don't have a good photo of the ones that came out decent.

Cloud shaped place cards labeling all the dishes that would be served got nixed. Decorations to transform one of my mom's chairs to a "throne" for Shayla also got scrapped. And a sash/maternity belt intended for Shayla to wear was also canned before it got started. And that was the extent of the crafts for the shower. Again, way too ambitious for the amount of time we had.

Instead, this shower ended up more cooking-heavy than craft-accomplished for me than usual. Or ever. But even that was downsized for the sake of time. We came out with two types of mini quiches instead of the three that we had planned for, the same with the mini desserts. Though they all came out cute, as things in miniature tend to be.

Baked Monte Cristo sliders that were a hit and Caleb's favorite.

The biggest hit and my personal favorite was the warm potato salad with smoked salmon.

The rum cake my family requests the most, I also didn't get around to baking. But we did assemble two food boards to finish out the meal offerings: one a cheese board, and the other a fruit board with a healthy, but tasty ricotta cheese dip.

It should probably feel like a lot was actually done, but knowing what could have been done different, and what we had imagined for the event somehow makes it feel like it wasn't enough. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining that we had too much to do. Like I said, these were all things we wanted to do because we were super excited to celebrate the upcoming arrival of our second grandchild/nephew. But I know I learned a lot of lessons from that shower that I will definitely keep in mind for the next event we end up planning.