The Baby Shower

 It officially happened - we had a baby shower. It's always been other baby showers but suddenly... here ours was! I'd like to say that it went by pretty smoothly... either that or I just didn't really care as much about preparations and presentation as I would otherwise normally have. I also didn't take very many photos; just snapped a few photos to make sure I had something, then put my camera away and sat around for most of the day :)

To start, the invite:

We were having two girls. They are both going to be born in the Year of the Rabbit. Is there a theme? Nah. But those two were good starting points. Cheapest and easiest invites I have ever made (about 10x easier than what my sister had requested for her baby shower invites!)... pink cardstock cut into 4x9 pieces, white cardstock also cut into 4x9 pieces with all text and images printed in one shot then trimmed down to show pink cardstock outline... folded pink cardstock over, did a few tiny hole punches and tied a white ribbon (with small footprint charm attached) to secure both sheets of paper. Fits into a standard A10 envelope... sorry for the dark image (faint pink images on each side are branches and leaves) - the first sample was taken at night with my phone... before Jasper chewed part of it up.

The location:

  

Clubhouse of the apartment complex that my sister-in-law not only lives at but works at as well, which is super awesome (for us) and convenient! As an employee of the management company, she gets all these perks like reserving the clubhouse space without having to put a deposit, and getting the space for the entire day with really no time limit (residents need to be out by 10pm; she doesn't - we had our new year's eve gathering here and stayed until 1am). Not only are those perks beneficial, but the space is really accommodating. It as a max occupancy of around 80 or 90 or so, has a full functioning kitchen with two full counters and 4 bar stools on each side, has a bar-style type dining table that seats 8 right next to the kitchen, has a 4-armchair and coffee table sitting area in front of the large fireplace, has three more round pub style tables with 3 stools each, has a large perfect-for-playing-poker table with 4 big sturdy chairs, has a pool table... and in the storage next to the kitchen there are some portable 6' long tables and a bunch of folding chairs. And multi-stall restrooms just off of the space. And two or three outdoor tables with chairs next to the bbq grills right outside of the clubhouse. Small groups or large groups - it suits all gatherings!

The food:

I didn't get a picture of the food??? Well, this is what we had: full roasted pork (yes the kind with the head and feet and all), fried rice, clear-noodle stir fry with shrimp and squid, egg rolls, spicy beef salad (compliments of mother-in-law), fried shrimp (compliments of mother-in-law), individually wrapped portions of sticky rice (compliments of mother-in-law), fried chicken wings (compliments of one of hubster's aunts), Vietnamese crepe type rolls (compliments of another of hubster's aunts), two different levels of spicy papaya salad (compliments of sister-in-law's husband's aunt who was fresh from Laos)... did I get it all? I feel like I'm missing something. And then the dessert table. My favorite part, obviously since I actually took a photo! My sister helped me with this one.

 

From left to right: three-tier holds 2 levels of mini strawberry cupcakes with vanilla frosting and the middle level with rice krispy treats cut into flower shapes; bowl of pretzels (for chocolate fountain), chocolate cake with chocolate pudding and cherry filling topped with whipped cream and chopped nuts; chocolate fountain (wasn't quite flowing well yet); fruit platter; four-tier holds cut strawberries, cut pound cake, cut bananas and cream puffs to be dipped into the chocolate fountain; skewers in the green tin; bowl of cookie mix with the pink and white frosted Mother's animal cookies as well as the tiny Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies; red velvet cake pops in vanilla chocolate shell with pink sugar sprinkles. Have you ever tried doing all of the baking and assembling knowing full well that you absolutely cannot have a taste, not even lick your finger when a bit of chocolate falls on it? It's hard, man.

And then drinks. We decided to go simple with this one: offer soda (in 2-liter bottles), water (in a pretty glass beverage dispenser lined with fresh lemon slices) and beer (as you can see, we put all the beer into the fridge first to chill them... the side door was nothing - you should have seen the main refrigerator and freezer).

The games:

I love the diaper game! I've hosted (or co-hosted) three baby showers and I will always have the diaper game! What's not to love? Diapers, melted chocolate... it looks so gross but part of you still says, I want a candy bar. And then you watch others try to identify which diaper contains what candy. Some stand far away and just guess... some stand real close without touching anything. Others with poke at the chocolate, and then, there are the few I've seen who have actually tried tasting the chocolate - not kidding.

Since there would be so many people coming and going, I put a "game table" on the side for all to participate on their own time with winners announced at the end of the shower. We had a diaper raffle (bring a package of diapers - we didn't specify a size) and three games. Game 1 was trying to match a pair of names of twin characters to the TV show they are on (i.e. Brandon and Brenda would be matched to "Beverly Hills, 90210") and Game 2 was trying to match the song title (all containing the word "Baby") to the artist - both Game 1 and 2 were multiple choice so at worst, you could just guess whatever was remaining. Then the "Guess the chocolate candy in the diaper" game was number 3. That one had the most participants because a lot of people claimed that Games 1 and 2 were too hard and gave up... I don't know why. All of the answers were there to choose from - just guess.

The only photo I actually appeared in - hahaha. You'd think that there would be tons of photos of the parents-to-be... but I guess we all forgot. On the left is Katie, wife of one of the hubster's former co-workers (who is super tall... I would guess close to 6') and on the right is Jenna, a current co-worker of the hubster (who is also tall, but not quite as tall as Katie). They were both bending/squatting a whole lot for this shot hehe.

The most impressive thing at the shower:

This diaper cake was from Francis. A dude. It was like a three-part cake - one side had a mini cake with teddy bear and pink letter blocks and the other side had a matching mini cake with teddy bear and blue letter blocks (I wonder if he realized that Charlie is actually a girl?). On the middle tier of the main cake in cut-out letters says "Charlie and Lily" and the cake is then topped with another teddy bear wearing plastic (toy) baby shoes. From a dude! But wait...

 

Liem takes the cake (haha) for this one. Or, these two rather. Yep - two diaper cakes and again, from a DUDE. He walked in balancing each one on each hand and it was definitely a stop and stare moment. He said a female friend gave him instructions on how to construct the diaper cakes, but seriously. They are impressive enough as is - and then from a DUDE to top it all off. And not only that, each tier is a different size diaper with the top tier being the smallest (newborn), the middle tier being size 1 and bottom tier being size 2. Each tier wrapped with pretty ribbon and the whole thing adorned with two different flower themes. And some butterflies. And each personalized with painted wood cut-out shapes for each letter of the girls' names, each letter glued onto a stick and secured into place by sticking into the diaper. And oh yeah. The cute plush animals as toppers. How thoughtful was that - each girl, though twins, would be similar, but not identical.

And I'll end this post on that.

Have a happy weekend!