My Lifesong: Baby Shower for Bailey

Last Saturday was an awesome day! Our house was filled with some wonderful ladies as we celebrated the upcoming arrival of Bailey’s little baby girl, Harper Lee!

Lauren and Trisha and I had been planning for months to be sure we had all the details ironed out and even though it felt like we were kind of running around like chickens with our heads cut off a little the morning before the party, as soon as 1:00 came around and the guests arrived, everything went perfectly!

After everyone had gathered and was able to 'ooo' and 'ahh' over how cute Bailey looked for a while, everyone grabbed some food and took their seats in the living room to start the activities we had planned.

I didn't take any good pictures of the regular food, but we had veggie pizza, a watermelon fruit carriage with assorted fruit in it, and crackers with a strawberry cream cheese type dip to eat. We also had great sweets of pink birthday cake popcorn, mints, a beautiful cake made by Lauren's aunt, and awesome cake pops! (You can read how Lauren made the cake pops in this post on her blog!)

Cakepops and the cake

Pink Popcorn and Mints

While everyone was eating and visiting some more, they all got a card that had "Wishes for Harper" on it. The cards were to be filled out with the things they hoped Harper will remember as she grows up. They were fill-in-the-blank cards with statements like "I hope you learn...", "I hope you never forget...", "I hope you become...", etc. After the cards were filled out, they were all then put into a scrapbook and used as a guest book for the shower. In that book, we also put the list of what gifts Bailey received from the shower and there are blank pages in the back where she can put pictures from the shower as well. That way, for years to come, Harper can read all the good wishes her family and her mom's friends have for her and see what fun we had celebrating her upcoming arrival!

The table with the favors and guest book on it

The other games we played were a 'Gift Bingo' game and 'Guess the Baby Food' game. For Gift Bingo, each person was given a Bingo Card and they were to fill in the spaces with gifts they thought Bailey would receive when she opened her gifts later. The first person to get Bingo would be the winner! For the Guess the Baby Food Game, we passed around 6 unmarked baby food containers and the guests could smell or, if they were brave, taste the baby food and then write down their guesses on a piece of paper as to what food they thought was in the container. The person with the most correct guesses won. I think the best someone did was get four of the six correct... I think I may have only gotten one right... None of the choices looked too appetizing to me!

Prizes for the games were Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies in a jar. I bought the jars from Wal-Mart and just layered in the ingredients. I found that you really have to press down the flower and oatmeal to make it all fit. It was quite a challenge to make it all fit until I got the hang of it! I found the colored M&Ms at Factory Card and Party Outlet. I was happy that I was able to find the right colors to fit in with the Pink theme!

Our final activity, and the most exciting, in my opinion, was making headbands and hair clips for Harper. I had bought about 9 different kinds of elastic and lots of different flowers and bows from several different Etsy shops and gave everyone a chance to make some hair accessories for Harper to have.

(Here's my Etsy board where I saved all the supplies that I bought for the headbands.)

We pre-made the elastic into 3 different sizes of headbands:

12" for 0-6 months

14" for 6-12 months

and 15" for 12 - 18month and up

(There wasn't any science to the sizes I picked. Everywhere I looked on the intertron had different sizes for different ages, so I wrote them all down and kind of averaged them and went with it.)

I also cut out circles of felt to put on the underside of the flowers. I found that helps immensely with attatching the flower to the band without getting hot glue all over and it also made sure that nothing from the bottom of the flower or the seem of the headband would hurt the wee one's head.

We made A LOT of hair pieces for Harper. She definitely hit the hair piece motherload! I had put a tag on each headband that had what size the headband was and each person that made the headband wrote their name on it as well, so Bailey would know who made it when she goes to put it on Harper for the first time. We decided the winner for this activity would be determined by which hair piece Harper wears in her newborn pictures!

There was barely enough room to hang them all up when it was all done!

The frame is just one I bought at Goodwill and spray painted. I then hot glued ribbon on the frame in a diagonal pattern and fancied up some clothespins to hang up the finished headbands.

We had to try out the headbands too!

After everyone had made their share of headbands, it was time for Bailey to open her presents! Bailey and Harper both got some good gifts that will be both useful and absolutely adorable! :)

Before everyone left, they were given some party favors, including a pink flavor of Bath and Body Works hand sanitizer with a tag that reads, "Thanks for coming and touching Bailey's life, now you are able to touch her baby." They also received a reusable Starbucks cup (the guests will save $.10 off their coffee each trip for using it) with a shade of pink fingernail polish inside along with some coffee beans (to use to make coffee or just to smell) and a sign stuck in the cup that reads, "Bailey's Brewing Up Something Special."

You can read more about the coffee favors on Lauren's blog as well.

The shower was a blast! I'm so happy that we were all able to get together to celebrate with Bailey. And now we wait for little Harper Lee so we all can meet her!

Everyone at the party (Except for Annie who had to leave early)

After the shower was over, all the Morningside girls (and Trisha, too!) hung out for a few hours and it was fun to all be able to be together for a while to catch up and just be us! It's so fun how we all pick up right from where we left off when we get together no matter how long it has been since we've seen each other. It's like we all still are living together in the same apartment or going to dance practice each week! I love these girls!