Showers of Love and Fear

My baby shower was Saturday and it was a blast! It was a nice mix of friends from work, church, and even online. My friend Raquel, who I originally met on Twitter came and I was so happy to finally meet her face to face!

I had a couple of sets of baby shower invites for work friends, then family and church friends. Here's one I had made by Storkie. It was fun creating it cause it started out totally different but I was able to select the girl's skin tone, hair color, the balloon color. It was a fun, and I have to give Storkie a big thanks for sponsoring the printing costs! Everyone loved them, they came in the mail SUPER fast, and the process was easy peasy! I recommend them for sure!

When it came to what to wear, I had a big dress dilemma. Remember how I was asking advice for choosing one? Well that dress didn't make it in time, I actually still don't have it. But that's what I get for trying to do it as a review instead of just buying it and getting it in three days. I ended up squeezing into one of my pre-pregnancy dresses, but because of the cut my tummy was able to fit under it just fine.

I got lost of the way to the party, and caught in the rain, but once I got there it was so fun to sit back and enjoy.

My husband was a trooper too. He didn't want to be showered but when I got home I put all of our gifts back in the bags and put the tissue paper over them, then I had him open them up all over again so I could see his reaction.

I have to admit, his reaction wasn't what I was expecting. He was more like "oh, cool" where as I was like "OMG THIS IS SO FREAKING CUTE!!" He asked me why I didn't just show him the stuff, but he was a trooper and played along with my demands request.

Later when I was putting our gifts away I had the strangest feeling come over me... Almost a panic about my daughter surviving. I'm not sure if it's because of all of the sad stories I've read or heard about or what triggered it, or what. I hate feeling like I'm being negative but I can't help it, it's hard to describe.

I wrote a post with a shower summary and explaining more of this feeling on my Parenting blog today, here's a part of it:

Friends threw me a baby shower last weekend, and it was amazing. Friends from different spectrums of my life came to shower me with love and advice. Since we live about a thousand miles from both sides of our family, I didn't have any kin there, but that didn't mean they weren't thinking about us.

Friends from work, friends from church, even a friend I'd made on Twitter celebrated my baby with me.

On the invitation to the party guests were asked to bring a book instead of a card with a cute poem:

"One small request that won't be too hard Please bring a book instead of a card Whether Cat in the Hat or Winnie the Pooh, you can sign the inside cover with a note from you. Baby will become very smart, if my advice you do heed, if we begin early, she'll soon love to read."

I guess my friends thought it was as cute as I did because Baby Girl now has SO many books as a start to her collection. Originally I had planned to put all of the books downstairs on our bookshelf but now I don't have the heart to take them from her room. I'm going to get some new wall bookshelves this week.We played the classic baby shower games: Deciphering melted chocolate from baby diapers, and guessing the size of my belly.One thing I really enjoyed was the advice cards women filled out for me. I smiled as I opened them all later and silently stored the tips one by one in my mind.But as I got home and started unpacking my gifts and organizing Baby Girl's room, the strangest, scariest thought came into my mind: What if she never gets to use these?

A sick feeling swelled in my stomach. I didn't want to think about it.

I've heard of women experiencing postpartum depression and having extreme fear of something bad happening to their child. I all of a sudden am questioning myself for taking gifts out of the box, or pulling the tags off of her clothing items, terrified something bad will happen to her before she ever gets to use it...

This was a part of a post I wrote for my Parenting Magazine Blog on Project Pregnancy. You can read the rest of it here.

I'm really enjoying blogging with them and I'm hoping they keep me on after Spawnie's born so I'd love it if you showed some comment love over there! Thank you!

The Baby Shower--Diaper Cake Tutorial!

The baby shower was a SUCCESS! Did I mention it was the first ever baby shower I hosted? I was stressed out to the nine because we had to plan it so soon. One of the planners is moving next month and we all had to plan around our vacations. Considering all of that I think it turned out really well! I'll add another post later with more info on the games we played, more pictures of friends and everything, but this post I wanted to dedicate to my gift to her... A diaper cake.

You may remember the first one I made... Lopsided. And the stand was pretty lame (actually I did cut it in a circle later I didn't hand it to her like that!). I think the problem I had was the fact that I stacked all of the diapers on one another and didn't have a solid base in between them. With this one I read a diaper cake tutorial online that helped. And I'm going to post my own version here for you all to see! I wanted to do a video blog but I was in too much of a hurry, so I hope this helps!
First, don't be like me. I went to Hobby Lobby and pranced around the ribbon section for a long time trying to decide which color I wanted. If you were on Twitter at that time you were probably one of the people who helped me-THANK YOU! My husband was waiting in the car and after (I'm embarrassed to say)... A half hour!! ..He came storming in looking for me! Luckily I had narrowed it down to this color.

Heidi (my friend) didn't want "pink" and the theme in her baby's room is "tropical sunset" so I went with orange ribbon. You'll see what this is for soon.

Next I bought flowers for the topper... Some people use stuffed animals, but I had a vision in mind and flowers fit into that better.
I found this for a dollar and thought it could make a nice touch. I didn't know how I'd fit it all in at the time but I just planned to figure it out from home.
Next I bought a tall (about a foot) cardboard cylinder (maybe 4-6in around) to use to make a stand. I also bought a big piece of cardboard (about $1.50) to use as the base.
Then finally, yes, I bought diapers. Some friends on Twitter told me the Pampers Swaddlers are best cause they're all white, but I think any kind works. Someone told me they've made one with cloth diapers, which would be cool but WAY more expensive! These kind were soft but a little pricier than the other disposables ($9.90 for a box of 40 sz1) I ended up having to send my husband out to buy another bag (and to be honest I'm surprised he found the right ones), but I only used about 10 out of the second bag... So about 50 for me, total.
Now to making it... First I rolled up all of the diapers. I bought a 200 box of clear headbands for $2. I rolled up the diapers. You can do it either way, but I try to keep the size with print on the inside.

I cut out circles for the base, I used a large dinner plate then a smaller salad plate and then a bowl for my sizes.
I covered the circles with tissue paper, so if it shows at all it's white.
I cut the cylinder thing into two diaper-height cylinders. Then I glued it onto the cardboard circles. I put the bottom and middle layer together first before adding the top, smallest circle.

After that I added more tissue paper around the edges of the circle so it could look pretty--I dunno, you don't have to do that. I also added some greenery to the smallest circle. Sorry I don't have pictures of that. I just used hot glue and scrunched it up, and glued it around the edges.

Then, I wrapped the diapers around the bottom layer (the bigger circle with the diaper-height cylinder in the middle). I did two layers, so it's thicker. I used a big rubberband to hold them all together... you need four hands to get it to stay, so hubby came to help me here.

On the middle level I did the same exact thing except just one layer of diapers around the middle cylinder. Same thing... Four hands to add the rubber band to hold it all. --At this point it may look lopsided and weird but done worry, trust me, read on!

Now you add the top layer--The smallest, bowl-sized circle. Here I used a smaller cardboard cylinder--An empty toilet paper roll was the perfect size, I didn't even have to cut it--and I wrapped a layer of diapers around it.

Then is the fun part!! Add the ribbon around each layer to cover up the rubber bands. Used hot glue just to close the ends of the ribbon together, you don't have to glue around the whole cake. I tried to hot glue each layer together near in the same spot so I could cover them. And then add flowers and go crazy! I cut some of the greenery around the flowers off in the beginning to add some flare underneath the diapers on the bottom and top layers, and I added some flowers to hide where I glued the ribbon ends together, and just glued them to sporadic parts of the diapercake to make it look nice.After adding the ribbon is when I really noticed it all coming together. I didn't even ask my husband what he thought before he noticed what I was doing and said "That looks really good Jenn!" It made my day! Since then I've been showing pictures to EVERYONE including YOU! So tell your friends! I'm really proud, and Heidi LOVED it! She can use the diapers if she wants but she said she never wants to take it apart, but keep it as a decoration in the nursery (which may be a good thing cause I went a little crazy with the glue in some spots).

I hope this little tutorial helps! I've never done a craft how-to before (maybe because I'm not crafty), but this was fun! Maybe it'll motivate me to do more! If you have questions feel free to ask me in the comments section! This was only my second one, but it was a HUGE improvement in my opinion!

Let me know what you think!

The Baby Shower Giveaway

Who loves baby showers? I know I do! To be honest I've only been to two. Isn't that crazy? With all of the friends I have with babies, that's not much! One of the baby showers I went to I made a diaper cake for her. I had just seen them not long before and thought it would be fun to make.

It didn't turn out as cute as some I've seen but I was proud nonetheless.

Baby showers are fun to go to and I love seeing all of the cute gifts the new mommy is getting. I'm SO excited for a baby shower one day cause it's like a second wedding or something except no groom and I'll be phat.

Going to a baby shower soon? In honor of my reaching 200 followers, and all my newly pregnant friends, Josie over at Raising Baby Cheap is giving away one of her baby shower sets from her shop Oh Baby Boutique.

This set includes:
1 crocheted around baby blanket
with a matching burp cloth
baby bib
chewy blanket
diaper holder
and binki clip!
(What's pictured are examples)

Everything is customizable too! Also, 1 lucky reader will win a $15 gift certificate to her store! She is also offering 15% off on anything from her Etsy site or either of her boutiques for the duration of this giveaway-just mention you saw this giveaway it when you order and she will reimburse you the difference! Trust me, there's lots of cute stuff there, from shopping cart covers to long johns to cloth diapers... So much stuff! Check it out!

To enter: Visit Oh Baby Boutique and tell me what you like best in the comments section and if you follow Josie's AMAZING blog Raising Baby Cheap you get 3 EXTRA ENTRIES!

If you want, you get can get extra entries if you comment letting me know if:
-You follow my blog
-You have my blog button (now two entries)
-You subscribe to my blog
-You favor my blog on Technorati
-You Tweet/ Facebook or stumble or whatever about this giveaway
-You post about this giveaway (now two entries)
-You voted for my blog in the 2009 Bloggers Choice Awards (worth 3 entries)

Please leave a comment for each entry. Contest closes Midnight 6/3. I'll choose 2 winners via random.org Good luck!

Also, don't forget about my other giveaway going on right now for Super-Spitter Burp cloths from Mommy Bee's LilBees Etsy Shop.