Baby Hudson's Woodland Adventure Baby Shower

Guys.

Parties are my jam. I love everything about parties. Like. Seriously. So when my super adorable cousin announced she was pregnant, I couldn't wait to start working on a baby shower for baby Hudson.

I co-hosted the shower with two others (my cousin, Danialle and my sister in law, Anna) and we had some help from our Aunts. There's some affiliate links throughout the blog to link you to items like what we used.

We devided the shower up into three parts so it would be easier for us to plan (the three of us do not live in close proximity to one another, but technology, yo!)

Anna took the lead on food.
Danialle took over games.
And I took on decor.

We had one group text and kept everyone in the loop with ideas and plans. I couldn't have asked for better co hosts. We work well together.

Food.
We invited about 50 people to the shower so were making the party for 40. We needed a way to feed a ton of people for not a million dollars and that everyone would enjoy eating (especially with a few special vegetarian/vegan diets).

Insert the best party food idea ever.

The Taco Bar.

Anna was on point. She made a spreadsheet of all the taco foods and we prices them out at Aldi. We were super prepared. We made most of the taco bar ourselves but had Qudoba cater the rice and queso.

We also decided to put together a cute trail mix bar. I got jars from Dollar Tree! And the kids loved all the little snacks.

Shout out to Aunt Tammy because she made the CUTEST Very Hungry Caterpillar veggie tray.

And Danialle took on cake responsibility and came through with super cute rustic cupcakes.

Games.
Danialle came up with some super cute game ideas for the party. We just HAD to play the clothes pin game. It's basically tradition for our family baby showers.

Everyone gets a clothes pin and can't say the word "Baby." If you hear someone say it, you get all their pins. Most pins at the end of the party wins a prize.

We also played the left / right game with a twist. There's a ton of left right games we found on Pinterest, but this one was fun and a twist on the game that people didn't expect.

We also asked everyone to fill out an envelope and drew prizes. This was a nice way to give Lauren a break when opening gifts so she could grab some food or walk around a bit. So every so often we would stop the party and draw a prize. This will help out when she goes to send her Thank You Cards too.

Everyone LOVED writing Lauren notes on some "late night diapers" We had quite a bit of clever and artistic people at the shower. And some super sweet and encouraging notes for the mom to be. Some favorites were a hand drawn poop emoji, Point It Down (a practical reminder for any new boy mom. Haha), and "Call me if you need me. Love, Mom" (how. flipping. sweet!)

We also had people sign a book staring the baby to be (Just go on Amazon and search "Hudson children's book" or any baby name and see what you can find. This one was super adorable and my kids gave it four thumbs up!)

I also used my Silhouette Cameo to make a custom onesie for Hudson. We used fabric markers and had everyone sign it so Hudson always knows he's so so loved. Especially since Lauren and Hudson live out of state, so what a sweet reminder of all his Maryland family.

Décor.
Lauren sent us a text of some super fun nursery inspiration and we ran with it. Cor taught me how to use our jigsaw and I may have gotten a bit carried away.

I cut and painted arrows to match arrows she showed us in the text. I also cut signs and used my cameo to make some stencils. I designed the signs myself and was basically obsessed with how they turned out.

When we cut down the holly trees in our yard, I made sure Cor held on to them so I could have chunks of wood and wood rounds for centerpieces.

We used table cloths to match our color scheme (teal, navy, white, and gray) and added craft paper on top. Each centerpiece had arrow fabric topped with burlap and a wood round, candle, succulent, book (like this Bob Marley Book!), jar of crayons, and a jar of flowers.

I also used this technique to chemical burn some wood signs.

I printed the taco and trail mix bar signs out and wrote over the titles with a metallic sharpie. I just popped them into some dollor store frames.

I ran some dollar store paper bags through my printer and made cute bags for favors so everyone would be "Ready for Your Next Adventure".
Each had some candy, trail mix, and some no dent elastic hair ties (I made those too. Because I'm a crazy person who likes DIY errrything). See a tutorial here soon! (Future Link)

Overall, the party was so much fun and we had a blast celebrating baby Hudson and his sweet Momma! We cannot wait to meet you, little boy.

Happy Birthday, Big!

Big is just a  little bit bigger today! I cannot believe that my itty bitty baby is already two years old. This year seemed to fly by and Big has been a super star throughout all of the changes the past year has brought to our family, like the addition of a whole new person.

To celebrate another great year, we had a party. I took Big to the dollar store and he found monkey cups and plates, pulled them down, and eek'ed and ooo'ed. That settled his theme. I made some banners and some toothpicks for some food using my Silhouette Cameo, and even made him a T.W.O shirt. We invited some of our favorite people and went bananas this weekend.

We kept food simple. I didn't necessarily intend to have a vegetarian menu, but things just worked out that way. The Spicy Black Bean Roll Ups are an adaptation of a recipe found here. We just subbed a can of refried beans for the chicken. 

Big turns two! 

Let's talk about cake. I made this cake here and it was absolutely delicious. I'm a "let's pick up cupcakes from the grocery store" kind of gal when it comes to birthday parties, so making his cake was a big deal for me. After a little bit of a mishap, I ended up making this cake THREE times. I made it once early in the week with great success, and then got a little too sure of myself and decided to skip some steps and baked a big soupy mess of a cake the night before his party. I literally finished his cake while people were still waking in the door to start celebrating. In the end, everything turned out fine and his cake was both delicious and adorable. I suggest using cream cheese icing. I melted a few chocolate chips to tint it brown and used the normal icing color for the inside of the monkey face. I made three cupcakes, two for the ears, and one for Big's special cake. I was pretty impressed with how well it turned out. 

All in all, it was so wonderful to be able to celebrate with Big and are family and friends. Even though I went crazy with decor and such, it was such a low-key, let's just hang out, type party. It was just our style and absolutely perfect. Thanks to everyone who came out to celebrate with us! 

Ain't No Party Like a Mouse House Party!

Big is about to turn the big T.W.O. and I am so excited about his party this year. Who am I kidding, I am excited to throw a party any year, but it is so exciting that Big actually "gets" it this year and is excited about helping pick things out. I was thinking about a monkey theme since he is an expert at making monkey noises complete with arm motions and everything. I took him to the store one day where he found monkey cups and began making EEEK EEKK OOO OOO noises in the middle of the store isle. That settled it. Monkey party it was.
I made up some quick invitations with a monkey clip art I found on Google Images and a rhyme I made up inspired by Big's adorable monkey sounds. It's not unusual for me to make invites and I love to let Big personalize them in some way. I usually let him color on the envelopes in his adorable, little kid scribble but I had an "I'm a genius and this should be on Pinterest it's so awesome" idea.

So, I present to you my "I'm a genius" Invitation Idea. It is so simple, I am surprised I haven't seen it anywhere before.

I went to Google Image search and looked up "Monkey Coloring Pages" and found this cute little guy:

I found this guy here.

I opened up a Word Document, went to Page Layout, and changed my size to a 4x6 page. I also changed the orientation to Landscape. With these settings, I now had a page that was the size of my invitation envelopes. I imported the coloring page, re-sized it to fit, added a text box, and typed in the names and addresses of my party people using a cute font. 

Font: Smiley Monster

I printed out each envelope as I finished. My Canon MP560 made it easy for me to re-size the paper to a 4x6 setting since I also use it to print pictures, but most printers have an envelope setting. 

After I printed all of the addresses, I picked out a few, carefully selected crayons to give to Big. I didn't want him using anything too dark, so orange, yellow, tan, and green were perfect choices. 

Big had a great time coloring the pages and making monkey sounds while doing it! I love that he was able to add his own personal touch to the invites we will be sending out. 

Genius, I know.