Nursery Final Touches

Abbey and I spent the day together painting a few canvases to put up in Desmond's nursery.  I painted a small canvas with a black silhouette of the world and the blue elephant picture here.  The elephant painting was inspired from a print we had seen at IKEA.

Abbey did a great painting of the giraffe here (love the expression!) and the hippo was done by none other than Steve!  The bright red here is used throughout the room - it was the paint they chose to use on the IKEA dresser.

Deciding on a layout.

This is where those pom poms from the shower ended up.  The red dresser looks great.

I love the striped ceiling and the bright red accents!

I recovered an old glider Steve got from a friend in cute nursery fabric and made the D pillow.

Steve put up these simple bookshelves.  The perfect way to display books and toys!

The completed photo wall.  So cute!  (we're going to put handprints and footprints on the empty canvases)

Kitty loves the new rugs!  All ready for baby...

Abigail's Baby Shower!

Ok, so here comes a long post!  I have been long anticipating the day of Abbey's baby shower.  My sister-in-law Dorothy and I were the hosts, and it really was the first party I completely put together myself (ok, Dorothy helped a lot with the cooking, set-up, and clean-up)  But the decorations, a majority of the menu, and the party planning was done exclusively by moi.  And, as you can well guess, I reveled in the opportunity to create!

My brother Tom and his wife Dorothy offered their beautiful home (even in the midst of a huge ongoing remodel - see my awesome brother's blog HERE) up for the party location.  Thank goodness for their large rooms because it was perfect.  I made a few craft paper buntings and hung them up later to be given to Abbey for nursery room decor.  I simply cut out a bunch of triangles and glued them onto a long string of twine.  I also used the twine to hang the blue tissue paper tassels onto the buffet.

Safari animals (bought at Michael's), some cute leaf ribbon, candles in mason jars, and a few treasures from the sea - all in a rustic box left over from T and D's wedding (made of "Folly-Wood" of course) - and boo-yeah you've got a centerpiece!

No party is complete without tissue paper pom poms!  I added some rain drops because it's a shower, and believe it or not it was not raining in Washington today.
I simply cut a bunch of tear drop shapes out of various blue craft papers (again a lot of left overs from wedding crafts were used - I keep too much) then I ran them through my sewing machine letting about an inch or two of thread run between each rain drop.
Super easy and the result was stunning.

More pom poms, more bunting, and the punch table is set up.

Food!  

Fruit kabobs, yogurt parfait, and onsie shaped sugar cookies (don't forget little blue hershey's "it's a boy" kisses).  Surrounded by the latest ultrasound picture and cute snap shots of the soon to be parents - aww.

Blue ducky punch and D for Desmond!

Donut holes, ham, and homemade quiches!  Yum.  This was my first attempt at making quiches from scratch - including homemade crust.  All three turned out and they were delish!

Plus my fun tissue paper tassels.  
Found an easy DIY from THE KNOTTY BRIDE on guess where?  Pinterest!

Food was eaten and enjoyed and then we moved on to presents...

Here's the diaper cake I made as an additional gift for Abbey.

Yay, presents!  This was a co-ed baby shower and it was fun to see Steve there along with the other guys that had the guts to attend (I thought it made the whole party so much more fun!)

The adorable couple.

After stuffing ourselves with food it was only natural to head outside and enjoy the rare May sunshine here in Washington and play a few rounds of bocce ball.

What a fun day.  Here I am with Abbey enjoying blue punch in a mason jar wearing my fabulous "shower" dress...  Cheers!