A Time to Bless Others and Have Fun Doing It!

Despite the craziness of life, we took time out to do something fun and celebrate the upcoming birth of our friends' (and Tim's co-worker's) first child.  Originally, we just wanted to have this wonderful couple over for dinner to get to know them better and have some fellowship before their life changes forever with the birth of their long-awaited daughter.  Then discussions at the office about throwing a baby shower and the desire for it to be a surprise which is hard to pull off on this very suspecting individual led to our invitation for them to come to our house for dinner and fellowship to then be the cover for a surprise baby shower thrown by the Life Financial Group.

A sudden change of date as of last Monday moved the shower up to Sunday (yesterday) instead of the following Sunday as originally planned, so it sent us in a flurry of action to pull the thing off.  With the support of many office personnel, we managed to make the shower a complete surprise and utter success.  Although, we hope that sometime, before or after the baby, we can eventually have the couple over for "dinner" officially.

I had a lot of fun planning the event and heavily relied on Pinterest for ideas for decorations and food.  Because my garden is abounding in tomatoes, tomatoes was the theme, and we made Bruschetta and Broiled plum tomatoes with Feta cheese as appetizers.  We served Tomato/Mozzarella Salad as a side.  Then for the main dish, we had crock pot lasagna and baked ziti.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the food, and all of the other food items others brought to contribute made for a full table and fuller stomachs.

For the main dessert, I made carrot cake in baby food jars and colored the cream cheese frosting orange to look like carrots.  I printed off labels for the idea from the internet and placed them on the jars.  We ate the cake with baby spoons.  It was a fun experience for those who indulged.

We presented mostly joint gifts.  Two in particular were special gifts - 1 for each of them:  A hospital survival kit for her containing all kinds of things that would be helpful and nice for her to have with her at the hospital and a Daddy Doody Kit for him for that emergency time when daddy may need to change a diaper or feed the baby.  Again these were ideas I got from Pinterest.

As a gift and decoration, I made a "Pea in the Pod" diaper gift using receiving blankets, diapers, 4 washcloths, a baby doll, and ribbon.  My boys had fun rolling the diapers for me.  They were a huge help!  We've been asked to make another for a different baby shower.  Maybe we should start a business!

I sent out ideas to the ladies of the office to garner help with some of the ideas, and got one volunteer who made the washcloth bouquets, and another one made the cute watermelon stroller fruit salad.  I added one elegant decoration that I've been dying to use ever since I found it on pinterest just for the fun of it - it was florals inside an overturned wine glass with a candle on top.  I loved how it looked.

The party favors were marshmallow pops I covered in melted chocolate and melted chocolate heart candies.

The afternoon was a fun time of fellowship enjoyed by all.  We were totally exhausted by the end of the party, but we were happy to have been a part of the celebration of such an exciting time in our friends' lives.