My cousin and I have always been super close. We are 2 months, 5 days apart in age. Our mothers are identical twins and very close, so Joseph and I essentially grew up together. And to make things seem a little backwoods, redneck...we are technically half brother and sister, at least from a genetic point of view. As our mothers share the same DNA, it would genetically look like we have the same mother and different fathers.
He got married to his high school sweetheart 4 months before I got married, and I have always been friends with his wife. (She let me borrow her shoes in 5th grade when I had to go sing with the chorus...we had been sitting on the bleachers and I dropped my shoes off under the bleachers. Now that is a good friend.)
When they announced back in March that they were expecting a little one, we are all very excited for them. And being the hostess I am, I was super excited at any opportunity to host another event. The theme for the shower was inspired by their bedding set, Carter's Tree Tops. I perused etsy.com and found these adorable invitations by Kim's Custom Creations. Don't they coordinate perfectly?
The shower was hosted at our local church at 2pm on Sunday, August 1. This was the first time I had hosted a shower at a venue, not a home, so I probably went a little overboard with trying to make sure every detail was perfectly planned.
My first task was to figure out how to set up the fellowship hall. When you're in home, it's obvious how to arrange seating, but I felt like I was starting with a big, empty slate. The church only had 8' banquet tables...I wanted to avoid the cafeteria feel, but I did not have the resources (or feel the need) to rent round tables when there were perfectly good tables available to me. After much thought, I came up this floor plan.
The "U" shaped lay out really helped to facilitate conversion and everyone could see the Mom-to-be open gifts.
Now, I stated, the church had 8' banquet tables, as well as vinyl table cloths to cover them. Once again, I didn't see the need to rent fabric table cloths, but I did want to dress them up a bit. I took some basic cotton and made some 44" and 22" squares in a variety of colors that coordinated with our theme (light green, dark green, yellow, and pink). On the guest tables, I used 4" terra cotta pots adorned with ribbon and holding garden annuals in pink and yellow shades. The result was beautiful and organic.
The cake table consisted a beautiful cake made my the mom-to-be's sister.
The drink table consisted of my favorite strawberry-lemonade punch, several pitchers of water, and two other terra cotta arrangement.
On the food table, we used our own fabric table cloths with the square accents as well. The centerpiece of that table was the diaper cake I made earlier this summer. I also used some small forest stuffed animals to accent the table. (I searched all over for those things...finally found some at JoAnn's fabric, of all places!)
