Daria’s Baby Shower

A few weekends ago, I had the pleasure of hosting a baby shower for my dear friend, Daria.  Daria is about 10 weeks behind me, which is so exciting because we are looking forward to being off on mat leave together and scheduling playdates that won’t just be for the guys to watch football and play Wii anymore!

Daria and I met shortly after I began teaching at Mother Teresa (2004) and got to know each other better during a course that we were taking during the school year.  She is one the most genuine, kind and sweet people you’ll ever meet, so planning and hosting a baby shower for her meant a lot to me and I know that she really appreciated it as well.

As for the invitations, I actually made them myself in photoshop after being inspired by the hip little invites that Catherine picked out for my shower  (I have obviously removed the contact info because many of my students have discovered this blog and well, I don’t need them coming to my house or calling me!)

Like us, Rob and Daria have decided to wait until the big day to see what they’re having, so for this shower, I opted for some bright, cheery colours like pink, yellow, blue, purple and green!

I also used gerber daisies to make it feel all girlie and pretty!

and some more daisies…

Even the cookies and cupcakes coordinated with the colour/daisy theme.  All the cupcakes, the cake (Gluten free for Daria!) and the cookies came from the Cake Shop on Greenbank.

Daria holding her cake

Caramel Cheesecake…this was divine!!

Aside from desserts, we had fresh cold cuts and buns, vegetable salad and dips and fresh summer fruit salad  (I think this salad was partly to satisfy my own craving for fresh fruits, especially the watermelon!)

What would a shower be without balloons?  I had actually purchased all the balloons late in the afternoon the day before and had them all filled with helium.  Unfortunately, for some reason, the day of the shower, every single balloon, except for the big one, was one the floor!!  I was so not impressed!! I had to run out again to have new balloons filled, but thankfully they re-filled them with a smile

For favours, I filled these little cellophane bags (hard to see here, but they have tiny baby footprints on them) with all kinds of pink and blue candies: campinos, jellybellies, sour bubble gums and dubble bubble, sugar candies and pink and blue swirled candy sticks!  Who doesn’t like candy, afterall!!

I had a few games planned for the ladies.  The first one we did involved playdoh and the second game required people to use their memories.  I put a tray in front of them with a number of baby related essentials (soothers, nail clippers,  a medicine dropper, a teether etc.) and let people look at them, pick them up etc for about 1 minute.  After that, I took them away and they had to then try to write down as many of the items as they could remember.  The winner received a prize and Daria of course, took home all the baby stuff!  I didn’t take a picture of this game, but I did take a bunch during the play-doh game!

I had purchased various colours of play-doh and set the containers out in front of all the ladies.  Everyone was asked to use their imagination and to create the cutest baby out of play-doh that they could.  Daria would then judge all the babies and choose the cutest one!  This was really fun and all babies were cute, but there could be only one winner….

All the babies ready for judging…

and the winner is….

Charmaine!!  Daria chose this one because it looked the most like her–red hair and fair skin (ok, so it’s pretty white! haha!)  Way to go Charmaine!!

The prizes for the games were bath gel/body cream sets that I’d found and wrapped up all pretty

This wasn’t so much of a game as it was just for fun, but I had a jar full of jelly bellies for people to guess at.  Of course the winner took the jar!

I had planned one other game (a baby word un-scramble) but after a few games, it was time to get to some gift opening!  You know by now that I have a thing for pretty packaging, so I couldn’t resist photographing some of the cute bags

I had actually just bought this monkey as well for our nursery just a few days before Dar’s shower so it was cute to see it popping out of this bag!

Bright and colourful!

This little monkey ensemble was a huge hit!! We all absolutely loved it, as did Daria!  I can’t remember who she got this from, but we were all cooing over it!  Had Gymboree had this in any other size but preemie, I would have snatched one up for our little person! How can you resist that little monkey!?

Another adorable little sleeper!

Some of the cute stuffed animals–the monkey on the couch and the sound machine giraffe

All in all the shower was a success and it seemed that everyone really enjoyed themselves! Good food and good company!  I am so glad I was able to do this for Daria and Andrew and I are both super thrilled for both Rob and Daria!!  We can’t wait to meet their little one, introduce the babies to each other and go through this exciting and challenging new chapter in our lives together!  Congratulations Rob and Daria!! You are going to be wonderful parents!!!