Our austin apartment

It might look a little creepy/old/and small, but once the current tenants move all of their stuff out and we've had a chance to reclean the place with some strong bleach, I think it will be really cute. (It's also really cheap for a downtown apartment) Plus aren't those built ins super cool?! I'm excited from when we can move in, in a couple of months and make it feel like a home. I can't wait to fill the window seat with a bunch of pillows and sew up a cushion!

Diaper Raffle insert for the invitations

Samantha and Jason asked if we could include a diaper raffle in the shower and after talking to Sarah she said she'd seen it included as an insert with the invitation., so here's the diaper raffle insert.

Food

Food:

The shower is going to be a brunch so I had some ideas for the food:

Egg Casserole: "Green eggs and Ham casserole", I think adding green food color would make it totally unappetizing so we'll just leave the casserole as it it. It has green chilies and ham in it.

Big Homemade Muffins: "If you give a Moose a Muffin"

Fruit Salad: "The Very Hungry Caterpillar Fruit Salad" We can cut up all of the fruit and then using a straw poke a hole through so it looks like the caterpillar has gotten to it.

Izze Drinks: "Fizzy Lifting Drinks" I can make the labels for these, so we can peal off the original labels and adhere these to them. Izze's are just sparkling juice and I'll labels them appropriately so everyone will know what flavors they are and that they're really izzes.

What else should we add or is this good?

Games and prizes

Library Book calendar:

I saw this a while back and thought it was a cool calendar. It has a stack of book where you write in the title of the book and when it's due back to the library on the spine, then there's a calendar part that has the days so you circle the date it's due back as well. I know the year's almost over but I'm pretty sure I could manipulate the dates so it could be a full year's calendar April 2010-April 2011. I thought we could use these for favors or with the prizes for the games. I bought the PDF on etsy for $4 for myself, but you're allowed to print the file as many times as you want.

Games:

As far as games I had a few things in mind. I always think it's nice to go to showers where you don't have to participate in a bunch of games, so I tried to think up a few that could be geared towards our book theme and can just be set up around the deck and back yard so you can participate if you'd like but don't have to.

1. We could have a ball of yarn and scissors and everyone can guess how big they think Sam's belly has gotten and write their name on the a piece of masking tape and up it on their piece of yarn and drop it in a jar. Who ever gets closest will win a prize.

2. We'll have a list of phrases and lines form different books and have everyone try and see how many they can come up with that match the phrases. They'll drop their answers in jar and whoever has the most will win a prize.

3. We can have a jar of jelly beans and have everyone guess how many there are and whoever guesses closest gets the jar of jelly beans..."Jack's Magic Beans"

4. It's not really a game, but we could have everyone write any advice they might have for Sam and include their favorite children's book suggestions for her little baby boy. We could also have everyone give name suggestions starting with J's if she hasn't settled on names yet.

Along with the different games we can have croquet set up and Dad's lawn game so everyone can have time to visit with each other and just hang out.

*We'll have Sam open her gifts towards the end and then announce the winners to the games

Prizes:

I thought we could get $10-$15 gift cards to Barnes and Noble as the prizes

Invitation

If you want to see anything larger just click on the photo. I printed off a sample of the invitation and all of the text is fine and readable. The quote at the bottom says: "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more things that you learn, the more places you'll go." -Dr. Seuss. I thought that this would work perfect with our book theme and also just for the baby...oh the places you'll go! I have made up labels and they'll just need the addresses added once we get them from Sammy and Mom. I just went ahead and order the invitation paper and envelopes, since the cards came in 25 pack, I ordered 2. I'm sure 50 invitations will be plenty. You can always use flat cards and cute blue envelopes for thanks yous and maybe for Sam's thank you notes even. The labels will wrap around from the front to the back with the deliver to: portion on the front and the from: on the back. Anyways, hope you like them. I also love these cute stamps!

Decorations

Hey Sammy, here was an idea of what we could do to the lanterns but with blues and greens if you like them, just for decorations hanging over/behind the table for food

This book belongs to...

I saw these on a friend's blog and they're free and we can print them on labels and they can be a part of the favors.

Cupcakes, food and the games

Okay, so I've just been thinking of all of the amazing ideas I've seen different blogs and just online in general. I remembered seeing these super cool Where The Wild Things Are cupcakes. I thought we could maybe make different cupcakes based on different books, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Where The Wild Things Are, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Dr. Seuss....etc. We could also make little flags saying what book each of the cupcakes was from (in case they needed explaining). We could also include the book as a table decoration. We could also do a fruit salad that's been "eaten" through by the hungry caterpillar. We could use a straw to poke the "bite" holes through the fruit

Instead of playing a ton of baby shower games we could have croquet on the lawn and the game Dad made with the golf balls that you throw on the side of the house. Just a nice afternoon lunch.

Another candy bar idea..

I also saw this candy bar wrapper idea that was for a wedding and they made candy bar wrappers with comic book pages printed on the paper. If we went with the book/library idea I could design a bunch of different wrappers based on children's books, just an idea!

Library Invitations

I saw this library card invitation and thought it was such a cute idea for a baby shower. Another thing to add to the theme could be that everyone can bring their favorite children's book for Samantha and the baby. I could make these up on my computer and we could just print them off ourselves on card stock and order envelopes from Paper Source.

What are little boys made of....

I saw this cute idea for a party favor for a boy's baby shower...so cute!

Baby shower ideas!

Here are a few ideas I had for the baby shower. The poofs can be hung above the deck and we could have a soda bar. The bottom picture is of different candy bar labels for a favor, they were on Rachael Ray's website, but the link is broken. I could make some up if I can't find the file. We could have Magnolia cupcakes instead of cake and I think it would be so yummy to have James' chicken salad croissant sandwiches and summer salads. Anyways, these were some of my ideas.