travel themed baby shower

In Junior High I met one of my best friends. Each of us also has a sibling (her sister and my brother) 2 years younger than us....so in 8th grade my brother and Amy's sister began dating. They dated all through high school, continued to date while attending different colleges, and after college decided to move to NYC together. They both worked on wall street...living the dream. In 2005 they got married in Cancun, Mexico. After working in NYC they decided to take a break, travel around the world, and then came home to Portland Oregon...not really home but much closer to home than NYC. Then we were all so excited to hear that they were having a baby and Amy and I couldn't wait to plan the shower....travel themed of course. 

For the invitations I die cut brown paper for the envelopes, and map paper for the envelope liner. Then I assembled the envelopes. For the invitation I printed the info on a rustic looking brown paper. Then I printed a card (like a postcard) for guests to write a wish on and bring to the shower with them....my favorite part is the green baby stamp where the postage would go...so cute. Then I wrapped it all up and put luggage type tags on it with directions for the postcard. 

I wish I had a picture of each individual piece but I wasn't thinking that far ahead I guess.

I hand wrote all of the invites...very big and curly. 

We did a lime sherbet punch with 7-up in mason jars. The green paper straws had flags that said....."arrival date....and the date of the birth".

We decoupaged the letters of baby in the map paper. Thank goodness for Amy as she did this and this is not  a task I would have had patience for. :)

I die cut cupcake liners in the map paper and I printed cupcake toppers that said 

"precious cargo on board". 

Game gifts...travel size wine, different kinds of beers, and in the bag...a bag of travel size goodies. 

For one of the the games I typed a list the word baby in all different languages from around the word and the guests had to guess the language. It was harder than we all thought. 

Mom made homemade sugar cookie favors....and I decorated them to look like the earth. 

We put them next to this sign. Loved making all these signs. 

I bought a cute suitcase box for guests to put their wishes in. In this box I also put the thank you cards for Haley to write to her guests. A shape of the united states out of map paper with the words thank you. Each guest wrote their address on an envelope for her. 

I always love this part of any party I do...the food...yay! :) This is where I had a lot of help. Amy made a few things, my mom did, and Amy's mom did, as well as myself. We had such an incredible spread of food from different countries all over the world.

During this shower all of our men were downstairs watching the Seahawks game so I thought it would be a good idea to include them in a fun little relay game. There were 4 people on each team, and there were 4 different activities...put a diaper on the dolls (my cabbage patch kids....oh I loved these so much), dress the dolls, pick up toys that we spread out all over and put in the basket, and drink out of a bottle. 

Here's my brother pounding a "man beverage" out of a bottle and Haley's young cousin pounding water. They got smart and took the lids off. 

Here is Haley trying to dress the baby, and Richie. 

It was a great shower and what an incredibly fun theme. 

nautical baby shower

I did a nautical themed shower for a dear friend of mine. She has two beautiful girls that were the 7 and 3 when she surprisingly found out she was having another. She and her husband were both excited when they found out they were having a boy. Shannon and I were sorority sisters and right after our senior year of college Shannon and Matt got married and then moved to Oregon. A few years ago Matt's jog brought them back to Gig Harbor. I was so excited to get to spend more time with my friend and it was just in time for my wedding. I was also delighted to be able to throw a baby shower for her. 

We had the nautical themed shower at a Thai Food restaurant that had a nice back room area. It was small but we were a small group and it worked out perfectly. I borrowed some nautical items from two male teachers that have sailboats and love to sail....the boats, life ring, lanterns and some small figurines. They really helped with the decor. 

Each guest found their name in a jar of sand at their seat and a paper to write their wishes for Hudson. Each wish sheet was rolled it up and a ribbon was put around it like "a message in a bottle" (below) for Shannon to read to Hudson one day. 

The brick wall made for such a cool background. 

I found a wonderful alphabet sailboat book that each guest signed for Hudson. 

Salt water taffy for a favor...."Thank you for sailing the S.S. Hudson"

My mom has an embroidery business so I took advantage of that and had her embroider Hudson's name on the flags that we hung above the life ring. 

This picture was taken at Hudson's first birthday and going away party....missing my friend who is now living on the east coast....hopefully they come home soon. 

wine dinner

Since there hasn't been a whole lot going on with the house lately I thought I would write about some of the parties I've done. :)

Not too long ago I had a wine and cheese party. It was at the end of my spring break and I think I spent the whole week planning and prepping for this fun little get together....my most favorite thing to do ever. Richie does not love this so much. I start to pull my tray and dishes and design pieces out days before to play with the setup etc. It totally takes over our house and me while I obsess over it...because it has to be perfect of course. Richie also knows that these parties cost money. :) So he makes sure to remind me not to go too crazy....but I always do and hey he benefits anyways so it all works out.  I knew that I had wanted to have bottles of wine disguised and have the guests guess the wines so I made little cards and disguised the wines and had gifts to give out for the winners. I also wanted to have a lot of yummy food. So I planned and cooked for the party. 

The food table.

I made Gorgonzola-Parmesan twists, manchego cheese-and-onion jam toasts (these look pretty scary on the plate but they are mouth watering delicious), and cheese stuffed dates with prosciutto. 

I also made these cranberry cheese ball pops. So cute and easy and most importantly delicious. 

I had a variety of cheeses and crackers and bread sticks to go with them. 

I found these printable signs here...this is where I also got my inspiration. Aren't these signs the cutest?!

I also had bruschetta on the table, goat cheese to go with rosemary raisin pecan crisps and bacon fig jam, and caprese skewers. The food was devoured....we had some leftovers but not many. A sign of a good party. I wanted to make the jam homemade but figs weren't in season so I bought fig jam from the store....I then boiled together 1/2 cup sugar, 1/4 cup homey, 2 T bourbon, 1 T balsamic vinegar, 1 T orange concentrate, some salt and 1/3 lb of cooked bacon and added the jam. It was perfect. 

I made sangria, had extra bottles of wine and water. This sangria was the best recipe I have made so far and I have made many recipes....I will use this one again and again. 

Ah and my group of party girls and their kiddos (I'm sure all of the men were surrounding the table...that's where they spent most of the night...eating). :) We had such a great time. And realized that guessing the wines was harder than we thought

foundation complete

Our foundation is finally complete. Yay!  And as Richie put it "ready for sticks". 

The other night Richie and I went out in the dark basically (it gets dark so early now) and put hay all around the lot to soak up all of the rain we will get. We were also so excited to see that the basement is ground level and will really walk out onto what will be some part of a lawn/patio so now our minds are thinking as we can change the design of the decks somewhat...we will probably wait until the last thing to figure that out but that is a big plus. A not so big plus that we also realized is that the guide wire for the oh so lovely power pole is right in the way of our front entry...we were worried about this...ugh!  Sooo the next thing on the list is to get this figured out and fix it....hoping there is a way we can get the wire moved to the other side without spending a fortune. 

I also met with Canyon Creek cabinetry and am waiting to get that bid back....I love all of the drawings and of course we went all out with our ideas/wish list...so I'm sure we will be way over budget but it's a starting point and I am trying not to get my hopes up. But anyways... I'm loving this next step of working on the design of things. 

Photo wall

Tonight I added to the collage wall. I decided to put the photos that I was going to put up on the staircase wall on the collage wall downstairs. I was just feeling a little weird about all the wedding photos and thought they would be better downstairs instead of right when you walk in the door. And....I think they made the wall  look complete...I kept feeling like it was missing something. Richie refers to it as my wedding shrine....better to have it all in one place. :)

I like it better than before. I could probably still change it a million more times...maybe too much white on top and black on the bottom...but hey it's up and that's it...for now anyway. :) Yay! 

photo collage wall

This was another big ticket item on my summer to do list. I had purchased the frames quite a while ago and have played around with the layout for months. Finally I ordered photos. I had contacted my wedding photographer to see if she had any suggestions for ordering professional quality photos, and she told me about mpix I was very happy with these photos, and the price was very reasonable. After I got the photos I moved around a few frames, then I needed my wonderful hubby to hang the frames....not a fun or easy job. :) We started with the large wall....I had started school so I brought my school work to the basement, he brought his wireless stereo to keep himself in a happy mood and we worked through it. I decided to add the letters from our wedding...I just love them.

I started with everything on the floor and from the floor we moved it up to the wall. 

My school work and Richie making sure everything is aligned evenly. 

I added these to the wall next to it. With our professional photo album and guest book. 

I like it...I think...for my first collage wall anyway. :) I think it is higher than it should be... maybe if everything was a foot lower it would be prefect. I knew I couldn't ask for this change at that time so we will let a little time pass and then see how Richie feels about moving everything down. :) Or maybe I just forget about it and keep this in mind when I put up a photo collage in our new house. 

Next these are going to go on the wall up the stairs. :) I hope friends that come over don't mind seeing lots of wedding photos of us. :) Maybe some day we will have a dog or kids we can put up pictures of but for now it's just us.