Oh Baby

I threw a baby shower for a good friend over the weekend.  A girl I went to grad school with.  When I got my bachelor's I didn't really have college friends.  Now don't go, "Aw, Mary didn't have friends."  I did.  My freshman year I went to a small liberal arts college and made a couple of good friends, girls I still talk to.  Maybe not regularly, but I still consider them close friends.  After that I transferred to a large state university and lived off campus with two of my best friends from high school.  Then I lived with a girl I met through a campus ministry.  All people I still consider friends.  But I didn't graduate from college with the quantity of college friends my husband has.  Instead I have camp friends (I worked at a YMCA camp for four summers) and grad school friends.  There were only seven of us in our program.  We all got our masters in counseling in just over 2 years, with a thousand hour internship and most of us worked full time.  While we were in school, two of us got married and two had babies.  That's a lot to go through together.  So, now another of my grad school friends is having a baby.  He's coming into the world the end of November and we couldn't be more excited to meet him.

So, along with another close friend from grad school, we threw her a shower.  No games.  We all love to sit around and talk.  And eat.  So those were really the highlights of the shower.  Of course there were presents.  But food is really what we all like the most.  And because I love taking pictures of food....

So, what did we make?  Let's go counter-clockwise from the bottom.  Tastefully Simple Garlic Garlic dip.  Guacamole and tortilla chips.  Tiny pigs in a blanket.  Pinwheels with salsa.  White cupcakes.  Baby blue punch.  Oh and little smokies.  They didn't make it in the picture.

We made white wedding cupcakes using this recipe.  Holy cow, they were so good.  My co-hostess actually made the cupcakes.  I just iced them.  And we made Sprinkles buttercream frosting.  Oh yum.  Make these. Do it right now.  You will thank me for it.

  

And we had the blue baby shower punch.  This is one of my favorite punches because it's just so fun looking.  We used Berry Blue Kool Aid but I really prefer to use the Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade.  Sadly, Walmart didn't have any so I had to use the Berry Blue.  Then it's just Sprite, Sierra Mist, or whatever lemon lime soda.  And vanilla ice cream.  And a rubber ducky that went home with that mama to be.  It's one of those that tests the bathwater temperature.

And now for my amazing craft project.  You saw a picture on Friday.  Mama to be is going to hang it up with her curtains, like we had it at her shower.  Her nursery is so cute and I love the bright colors she has picked out -- orange, yellow, green, blue, and red.

How did I make this?  I cut a Beauty Brands ad to make a template for my flags.  Then I just cut out each flag.  I made eight.  Then I also cut backs for each flag out of the same material I used for the binding.  I sewed each triangle together on the bottom two sides, leaving the top open since it would get sewed into the binding.  For the binding I sewed together two strips of fabric to get the right length.  I folded my long piece in half and ironed it to make a good seam.  I fold each half in towards the middle again and ironed it to make a straight binding.  Then I just put the flags in and sewed the whole thing together.  I didn't do any sewing on my binding until the flags were in.  No point in doing more work than necessary.  I was so happy with how it turned out!