Veggie Garden Baby Shower

On July 14th we threw Sara a baby shower at Mom's house in Bow, Wa.
The theme was "Veggie Garden" in honor of Sara's nickname, Bean, and our nickname for the baby, Sprout (it also tied in nicely with Sara's book theme, Soil Mates).

Me, Sara, Susanna & Mom

The centerpiece of the party decorations were vegetable cake pops. Susanna paired her cake decorating skills with her friend Heidi's cake pop expertise, and they created a masterpiece. The carrots and sweet peas were lemon cake and the eggplant and tomatoes were red velvet. They all had cream cheese frosting.

 

Susanna put a lot of work into the details, including dry-brushing color onto the tomatoes and carrots for highlights. The pops were stuck into styrofoam, which was then covered with All Bran, Cocopuffs and mini gummy worms.

Sara thought they were delicious

So did Alexis

In addition to the cake pops, Susanna made mini duct-tape flowers as centerpieces for each table, and then we gave them away for party favors.

Additional party favors (can't have too many favors right? everybody loves a freebie) were jars of homemade strawberry jam (another creation by Susanna).

We decorated the food & drink tables with garden-themed children's books and crocheted vegetables and berries (also made by Susanna - she was busy!).

 

 

We didn't do too many "activities" but we did prepare some just in case.

We set up a table as a baby block decorating station.

I made the bunting out of paper and bias tape, and I sewed it up on the sewing machine.

To create the blocks I purchased a 42" x 1.75" x 1.75" wooden banister post from Woodcrafters. Mike cut them down into 1.75" square blocks and Sara and I sanded the cut edges.

I sorted through Mom's extensive stamp collection and picked out a bunch of easily recognizable shapes, letters and lots of fun patterns. We used permanent ink stamp pads that were formulated for wood surfaces.

I hope to finish decorating the blocks (only a few people decorated them) and then coat them with melted beeswax.

Tia & Susanna makin' blocks

Another activity I pulled together were baby shower Mad Libs. I found two types online and reformatted them to fit our party, but unfortunately we didn't really get a chance to do them. We did get almost everybody to fill out a "wishes" card, however.

In place of "advice" cards for Sara and Bobby, we had "wishes" cards for Baby Bean Sprout.
While I created the layout to match the invitation, the "wishes" are from Suzie's Cards on Etsy. There are lots of people on Etsy who will create these for you if you don't have the software to do it yourself.

We had a lot of fun reading through these cards at the end of the party and we have plans to incorporate them into a baby shower photo album.

The rest of the party was dedicated to eating, chatting, wandering around the gorgeous property, and opening presents!

Sprout will be a Springsteen fan, for sure!

Alexis picked out some of her toys to give to the baby

Sara seemed to be pleased with the baby mobile I made...

It was a great celebration for Sara and the soon-to-arrive baby. We're excited to meet you baby bean Sprout!