Monica Wants It: Oh baby, it’s my 100th post.

I know I’m a DIY/shopping/recipe/home/crafts kind of blog, but sometimes you gotta stray to something fun, personal, and exciting.

I wanted to do something simply fabulous or earth shattering for my 100th post, but I couldn’t come up with anything. Nothing. I don’t have a new project to reveal or a huge announcement. Nada. Zilch.

All weekend long I thought and thought about it, and Monday at 9:43 p.m. it came to me. Well, not to me exactly, but Andrew came to my sister-in-law and her boyfriend Stephen at 9:43 p.m. weighing in at 8 lbs., 20.5 inches long. He’s a cutie. I remembered I talked about her baby shower awhile back, but I never did post about the actual shower itself.

So, in honor of my adorable nephew Andrew, my 100th post is pictures of his big bash! Wahoo!

Jodie wanted a safari theme with BRIGHT colors. We chose aqua-ish blue, orange, and lime green. Those are now also my living room inspiration colors, oddly enough. Weird.

I’m going to take you on a tour of all the things I did for her shower. Could I have done more? Yes! However, I did what I could given budget and time constraints. Jodie wanted a cardbox (no one used it- there were NO cards!), and she tried to DIY by painting on the box. Here’s an example:

No offense, but it’s ugly. So, I decided to do it my way instead:

Ta-dah! What do you think?! I think it’s so cute! Very easy! I just print on cardstock, used spray adhesive, and called it a day. Total the cardbox was definitely under $10.

Next up, I baked about 100 cupcakes in 4 different flavors: strawberry, chocolate cheesecake, butter pecan, and confetti vanilla. I won’t lie, I made them all from ~~scratch~~ boxed mixes. It’s easy, it’s yummy, it’s cost effective. Sue me.

Then I iced them all in 4 coordinating colors (orange, blue, yellow, green) and made cute cupcake flags using my handy dandy 2” circle punch and Powerpoint. Make 1.8 inch circle, decorate, print, punch, use double sided tape to adhere, and stick into cupcake. Eat. Enjoy. Repeat. Five times. Or six. I even made a cute little table tent with the flavors. Aren’t I nice? I know I am.

Time to set up the tables! We used a blue plastic banquet cover roll from Party City. It was like $15 for the 100 foot roll. I know some people are fancy schmancy and would rent table linens- we don’t have that in Beeville and the clean-up time was SUPER short. Please forgive the plastic covers! Oh no, now you’re looking at them even more, right? STOP! Look, a squirrel…!!

Ok, not a squirrel, but a monkey. And zebras. Plus giraffes. I created the napkin rings because I didn’t want the tables to look so plain. I technically could have just done the typical/lazy thing and put a stack of napkins, plates, forks, etc. by the food, but I think making it seem as if there were a place setting at each seat was a notch above ho-hum and well worth the small effort.

Where I did put a ton of effort were the centerpieces. Here’s the centerpiece that was on Jodie’s table (sis-in-law/mommy to Andrew). It’s one of those $9 cupcake trees from Wal-Mart.

Dum-Dum topiary centerpiece:

Small lollipop jungle centerpiece:

The dum-dum topiary was probably about $8-10 each to make. The small jungle one was probably about $4. Very inexpensive and easy to DIY! If you need directions on the centerpieces, stay tuned for the very next post. #101. Wow!

More cupcakes! The cupcakes were ALL gone. They were a big hit. Good thing I slaved over them. As in slaved in the Wal-Mart cake aisle to decide which 4 boxes to buy. Yeah.

Yummy drinks. The blue drink is hawaiian punch + Sprite. The brown one is half lemonade and half tea- this is Jodie’s fave drink.

Lots of sandwiches:

Lots of presents:

Happy Mom:

Friends & family:

Shiny things:

And now onto the crazy/embarrassing games that are a MUST at any baby shower. And the prizes were fabulous and from Dollar Tree.

Game #1: Put vaseline on your nose (yes, really) and dunk your head into a bowl of cotton balls. Best with 2+ people, whoever gets the most cotton balls on their plates wins. What’s the catch? Can’t use your hands!

Game #2: Baby food feeding race. To create the blindfolds, we bought the Dollar Tree kiddie pack of headbands. They’re stretchy and the little girls love them. Both people are blindfolded- one eats, one feeds. First team to finish the baby food jar first, wins. BUT they just can’t end up with food all over their face like Laura below, the point is to EAT the baby food. We did this with 4 teams at one time so 8 people could play. We did an adult round and a kid round. Fun was had by all who didn’t have to play this game. :-P

Game #3: Get a clothesline/twine, a basket of baby clothes, clothespins, a nanny (to hold the basket), a fake baby (we forgot ours and used a roll of paper towels), and finally a timer. Have contestants hang up all the clothes on the clothes line while holding/feeding the baby- whoever does it the fastest wins! This game was hilarious to watch.

Game #4: Make a diaper out of toilet paper. Jodie picked which ever pair made the best diaper. Again, very funny.

Game #5: Contestants each get 1 sheet of construction paper. They then put the paper behind their back and they have 1-minute to tear off pieces to create a paper baby. Here’s the winning baby by Pamela! Isn’t it cute? It looks more like Shrek than Andrew, but it makes for great scrapbook stuff for the mom-to-be.