Showered with Lurve

I intended to do all these detailed posts about all the other wonderful baby showers that my loved ones organized for me, but motherhood came a few days early, and well, my schedule was turned upside down. I still want to write about them though (or show a few photos), even if it is just a quickie post (about all I have time for these days).

First, my family threw together a shower for me, and my cousin used her son's old Ninja Turtles as decor.

For giveaways, I experimented with sugar cookie stamping, and used the design of a "Monster Man" shirt a friend/pseudo-sister gave for the stamp. At the back, there's a sticker that says, "That means 'thank you!' -Little Monster"

My husband's friends also organized a shower for me at Eleven Tables, a fondue place.

My teammates threw me one (complete with my Officers' Club favorite buttered chicken)...

 

...and we played a round of disc golf aterwards. I was around 35 weeks pregnant so my sense of balance while throwing the disc was a little off!

 

Finally, my former co-workers decorated an area of Borough for me--diaper tower atop a disc, balloons, cupcakes, and all!

This was one of the best things about being pregnant--just feeling so much love from everyone! A big thank you to all those who took the time and effort to welcome our little monster!

Scenes from the French Countryside

How I wish I could tell you that I really was in Provence, but since I am grounded for a while, my friends just decided to bring the French countryside to me! BFF Mads, her (and my) sister Prits, and our good friend Mutya organized an absolutely lovely French-country-themed baby shower for me and le petit monstre. My amazing BFF pulled this off despite being yaya-less and nursing a newborn! I am incredibly lucky to have her in my life!

(Top) With Mads, who doesn't look like she just gave birth less than two months ago! (Above) With BFF Ching, who provided the prizes for the games, and party decorator/official photographer Mutya. What pretty friends I have, n'est-ce pas? (Incidentally, Mads speaks fluent French.)

Mutya decorated the tables with dainty glass vases filled with purple and blue flowers, and glass bowls with mini-chocolate bars. These were placed on top of white and silver doilies.

I think I overindulged. I absolutely cannot resist Crunch and Reese's!

It was a carb-filled afternoon, with yummy sandwiches, croissants, and quiche...

...a selection of delicious cheeses (my fave? The truffled cheese!)...

...and a crepe cake (so French!) with Nutella cream. (The eclairs were divine! The fudgy chocolate cake was from one of the guests.)

There were fun games, including a "compose a lullaby" one, which pitted my highly competitive high school friends against my equally competitive college friends. The winning lullaby (sung adagio to the tune of Justin Bieber's "Baby"):

...which led to me doing a lot of this...

Photo from Mutya

To go with the theme, I dressed in a doily-like lace dress, gold sandals, a turquoise-and-gold necklace, and a gold bangle. Mutya gave me a beautiful bouquet. I love getting flowers!  

There were gifts, of course (thanks, everyone!), and great advice from mommy friends, including Mads. (Her words of wisdom: "Sleep while you can!") To thank them all for their generosity, time, and love, I gave them the smell of the French countryside: lavender. I had lavender soap made, wrapped it in some tulle I had lying around, and included a little thank-you note from little monster. 

After most people left, some of us chilled with Mads's family, eating cheese and salami, and drinking wine (water for me). Ahh, to have had a glass of champagne would have made it perfect! Just a couple of weeks to go!

Football-themed Baby Shower

A friend of mine asked me to help her with decorations for her sister's football-themed baby shower. We had less than a week to prepare, and I was crazy busy (December ish deadline, planning seminar, video shoot for some conference thing, events--including the Muji opening, woohoo!), so we weren't able to do a lot. But a few snapshots...

My friend's brother-in-law provided us with an "usher": Hottie Ronaldo pointed the way to the venue! (Hmm, I think he'd work in a bridal shower too! Haha.)

The shower was held at the White Space Commissary, which serves yummy Cafe Bola food. The interiors had a high ceiling and lovely lighting (mostly natural light streaming in through the windows and doors), which gave the place a nice, airy feel.

I handcrafted a baby name banner. Originally, I thought of using several different World Cup jerseys as inspiration, but eventually decided use my go-to color scheme for boys' baby showers: blue and orange. Thus, I just made mini versions of the Oranje and Argentina jerseys!

We had baby blue and orange balloons to match. For the tables, I made mini vuvuzelas. In hindsight, I probably should have used another color, because they kind of looked like extra-slim traffic cones! My friend's niece immediately recognized what they were supposed to be though, and tried the whole time to produce some sort of sound from them. I tied blue and white ribbons around them, and placed these on top of grass tiles that my friend brought. Cafe Bola printed out football placemats for us.

There were football-themed prizes for the games (one was a football relay), courtesy of my friend's BIL.

The giveaways were a cupcakes with green frosting to mimic grass, and a little football on top.

And keeping watch over the cupcakes, Footballer Elmo! I swiped him from my nephew's room. Here he is with a vuvuzela...

Fun! I'm planning another baby shower before I (again) leave for NY. I'm really starting to consider this as a potential sideline!

True Blue

Just wanted to share this cute little number I found online. Hamil and I gave it as a gift at that recent baby shower. A little backgrounder: The dad is a true-blue Atenean, and I'm willing to bet a million pesoses that it's Ateneo or bust for his little Aaron Matthew. So anyway, the gift...

The other boys at the baby shower--all Ateneans--already said they wanted the same gift for their own babies! Funny because one of them isn't even married yet. Har.

I found this cutie at The Urban Baby online shop. Since I was doing some last-minute shopping, I was worried that they wouldn't be able to ship on time. But they were nice enough to deliver right to my office! There are also onesies for future Lasalistas and Iskolars ng Bayan. Prices don't seem to be updated (at least not for this item), but the price diff isn't that big. Just make sure to clarify with them first to avoid confusion.

Googoo-go Ateneo!:D

Baby, Baby, Baby Oh

I volunteered to take care of decorations for a friend's baby shower today. I loved this post so much that I chose a color palette of blue, orange, and brown--equal parts sweet and sophisticated, and subtly boyish.

I wasn't quite as thorough as my peg (for one thing, we don't have stores that sell really nice scrapbook paper for a dollar!), but doing this really inspired me to develop my baby shower styling skills! A few photos...

I made banderitas bearing the name of the baby boy, who'll be making his grand entrance any day now.

Mommy Rhea joked that she would be using the same banner at Aaron Matthew's baptism.

I used cartolina and some striped wrapping paper from The Wrap Shop. My friend Sheila added the bibs.

I originally wanted to hang blue and orange paper flowers from the ceiling but 1) the Japanese paper that looked orange in National Bookstore's light turned out to be yellow in daylight, and 2) it wasn't feasible to hang them. Our host Tita Grace called their househelp to take a look at my handiwork, and Yaya suggested that we use the flowers as centerpieces, with some real blooms (from Market! Market!) right at the center. Ingenious!

Aren't they purty? One of the shower organizers, Sandy, asked if she could take one home, the way Pinoys take home centerpieces at weddings. Haha

If you want to learn how to make these paper flowers, click here.

Sheila brought some baby clothes and shoes that she intended to hang, but she decided to just scatter them throughout the dining room. These were mixed with some balloons that Tita Grace had on hand.

I'm starting to dream up baby shower themes and am raring to decorate another friend's upcoming party! Too bad it's still about four months away!