Show us your life- Baby Showers

How fun that this week over at Kelly's Korner's Show us Your Life, the theme is baby showers!

I recently (this past Sunday) helped host a shower for Stephanie! Steph is married to William, one of DW's cousins, but she's also one of my dearest friends. They are expecting a boy, due 9/9/09. (Pretty cool due date, huh?) The baby is being named after his Daddy, but some of us will call him, "Willie." (Which I think is precious). Anyway, my Sister-in-law, Lauren and I, along with an aunt and cousins hosted a drop in shower on Sunday afternoon.

Lauren, Me & Stephanie

William and his Dad really enjoy duck hunting and so Stephanie decided to make that the theme of Willie's nursery. We decided to carry the theme into the shower, and what perfect place to host a duck hunting themed shower than the family lodge?!?!? There's plenty of manly things including lots of stuffed game on the wall! While it wasn't the typical "baby" shower, I think it turned out really cute and was SO William & Stephanie....

It was a great afternoon and I was so glad to play in part in hosting a shower for Steph.
She's such a good friend and just the person who's always doing for others and is beyond unselfish....so doing anything for her is a treat! She and William are so excited about baby Willie.

Here's the food.... we decided to "girly" up the food spread by serving it in our Arthur Court pieces. But kept it boyish, too, with the burlap and cattails. We also covered letters to make his initials with reindeer moss. Steph's going to hang these in Willie's nursery, too....

Steph loves polka dots, so the cakes had brown and dark green (camo colors) polka dots on them.

On the melon at the top of the fruit cascade, I carved the Ducks Unlimited duck head...

Here's Steph opening gifts....

Since the shower was a drop-in, we set up a couple tables to display the gifts as Stephanie opened them. We made tags on the Cricut and taped them on the gifts and wrote who the gift was from as we displayed them.... Here's one of the tables... (the pic of the other table and of the little clothes hanging up didn't turn out...)

The last girl shower I helped host was for my BFF, Carrie, when she was expecting Allie Claire. The shower was last September. (Hard to believe that Allie is almost a year old & that Belle will be right behind her!). It seems most couples our age help host a couples' shower for the parents-to-be. It's a fun way to let the new dad's get involved and be a part of the whole thing! Devin and I love Adam & Carrie dearly and we were excited to have a dinner to celebrate with them. Allie Claire was due in the Fall, which happens to be Carrie's favorite time of year! I knew since Allie was a girl, we had to have some PINK involved in the shower, but since there were also men coming to the shower, we wanted a male friendly atmosphere, too. Ha... We decided instead of having the dinner at our house, to have it at the lodge...We thought having it there would keep the men feeling "manly"--- ha! When I went to order invitations, I found the sweetest ones with a big brown branch and tiny pink birds on it. Then decided to just carry that into the decorating for the shower.

We had pork tenderloin for dinner and instead of a cake, we had a couple homemade desserts... chocolate delight and banana pudding...

Adam & Carrie opening gifts....

I don't have any pictures from any of my showers with Cooper. I hate that I don't. I just wasn't a good picture taker before he was born. All of the showers were just perfect and I appreciated them so much.... One that was really a good idea was the one that I had at my work (I was working at Millennium at the time). Because I was already having several showers, the girls I worked with, decided to have a diaper shower at work instead of a traditional shower...It was great because they had everyone bring diapers...between the diapers we got from that shower and the ones given to us at our other showers, we didn't buy diapers for almost Cooper's first year! I thought the diaper shower idea was a great one!

With Annabelle, we also had several showers. (People are just sweet where we're from!) :) I do have a few pics from her showers, but didn't take as many as I wished I'd had... I'll share a couple of each....

Our couples' shower was at Adam & Lauren's house. Our friends, Cullen & Megan & Cecil & Charon also helped host it. The girls outdid themselves with all the yummy food. We had 2 different fondues with lots of dippers and then also a couple homemade cakes. YUM. The decorations were so sweet... lots of fresh flowers, candles & tulle...

It was sweet for Devin to get to come to a shower. I let him open the gifts and I read the cards...

Here's a couple from a dinner that the girls I graduated college from hosted for me....We had italian food and it was a fun time to get together with my "RRS" girls...

This was a shower that the same aunt & cousins who helped with Steph's shower this weekend hosted for me...Steph & a couple other cousins also helped with it...Everything was PINK! :) It was very girly!!!

The cute favors...

And here's pics from my last shower... Is this spread not BEAUTIFUL?!?! It was equally delicious...

Look who made her first baby shower debut... that's Allie Claire, Belle's BFF...

Baby showers are so sweet and fun. I love, love, love helping host them and celebrating a new little life! But, I can say as much as I have loved hosting them, I have loved having them hosted for me even more! Is there ANYTHING better to celebrate than having a baby on the way?!?!? Now, somebody get pregnant, I want to host another shower! :)

Next Friday at Kelly's Korner is wedding showers...

Have a great weekend---

~annie~