Baby Shower #2
Hi Everyone! Happy Friday!
Today I wanted to share some pictures from my second baby shower a few weeks ago. I had a lovely and amazing (and big!) co-ed shower in Denver the week before, which I loved. This one was local and smaller and all women and I loved this one, too. They were very different, which was really cool. Shower #2 was much more like a traditional baby shower, and we had so much fun!
The shower was held at my house...here are onesies on a clothesline along our driveway...too cute!
It was was thrown by my lovely next-door-neighbor/best friend in town/assistant (she comes in the mornings Monday through Friday to help me with work). She did so many creative and cool things with my shower...and was so excited to throw it for me, which made me so happy... :)
A few pictures of some of the guests...this is my mom...absolutely love her to death!
And Katie, Ann's daughter. Hanging out with Katie has been my kid fix for the past few years. She's so cute and girly and super, super smart...
And this is my mother-in-law, who flew in from Vegas for the shower. She's wonderful. :)
And Heather, a friend of mine, and Maria, Ann's neice whom I've gotten to know pretty well. These girls are so stylish, each in their own way.
First, we played games, including one where each bag contained a baby-related product (pacifier, washcloths, baby hairbrush, etc.) and everyone had to guess what was in the bag just by feel. Fun!
Here's one of my writer friends, Jill, trying to guess...
After games we opened gifts...here's me unwrapping...everyone's gifts were amazing, but I especially loved the handmade things and there were lots...quilts from my mother and mother-in-law, super cute knit hats, flannel burp clothes in the cutest prints, etc. I absolutely love handmade things... (And PS I can't wait to show you the quilts my mother-in-law made, but they have the babies names on them and we're not sharing those until after the babies are born).
And then there was cake...German chocolate, my favorite, and vanilla ice cream, and green iced tea mixed with 7-Up. Super yummy. And I got to get out my grandma's silver and my other grandma's starched white linen napkins...things I don't use very often, but love that I have...
Ann even made me my own fruit cake, because I'm really not supposed to have sugar. How cute and thoughtful is this!?! (Full disclosure...I did have a tiny piece of German chocolate cake, too, although I didn't have any of the frosting because I promised my husband I wouldn't. In exchange, he promised me that after I deliver the babies he will bring German chocolate cake and champange to me in the hospital.)
Ann also had piggy banks set out for each of the twins, into which people put advice for baby girls and boys, good wishes for us and the babies, donations to college funds, etc. I haven't opened them yet, but really looking forward to it!
And here's Ann telling everyone about the sign-up sheet she put together to make sure everyone helps us out with meals (brings us something or sets us up with pizza, etc.) the first two weeks after we come home with the twins. So sweet...I'm sure that's going to be a lifesaver...
A group shot looking down into my living room...
So, all-in-all, such a great, crafty, homemade kind of shower...I absolutely loved it...had the best time and felt so, so loved.
Thanks, Ann!
XOXO
Baby Shower #1!
Hi Everyone! Happy Friday!
Thought I'd post a few pictures and stories from my baby shower last weekend! :)
First of all, there was snow, and lots of it. We live on the Western edge of Colorado and were driving over to Denver (4 hours away) on Friday. Were a little worried about the passes, but they were no big deal. But Denver itself had this crazy storm which essentially shut the city down.
We (my husband and I, my brother, my parents, my best friend and her husband who had flown in from Seattle) spent Friday night holed up at my brother's...he lives about an hour outside of Denver up in the mountains in the house where we both grew up. It was fun to be snowed in!
Oh and two super-cool things happened on Friday: First, when I first saw my BFF, she and I were wearing the exact same sweater, which for some reason made me so happy. And second, my parents had an envelope for me, which contained a TOTALLY unexpected inheritance from my grandmother, who died last summer. What a huge surprise. We're looking at it as a gift for our babies, as we're going to place the money in their college funds.
Here are the icicles at my brother's Saturday morning:
Saturday started with light snow, but it stopped and the sun came out and the main roads all got plowed and it all worked out fine.
The shower was kind of a co-ed happy hour thing at my friend Betsy's Denver home. I know Betsy from San Francisco...we worked together at the ad agency and have worked together on and off in freelance capacities ever since. She's also a very dear friend and has been with me through a lot of this fertility stuff--from going with me to my initial diagnostic appointments, to even putting me up at her house and taking care of me while on bed rest for one of my cycles when my husband couldn't be with me.
She went all out with jungle-themed shower decorations...the whole house was so lovely and festive...unbelievably cute:
Here's me with my fabulous husband right before things got going:
And with my best friend Danielle (who co-hosted the shower with Betsy), and her husband Jason:
I know Jason and Danielle from Santa Barbara...Jason was in a punk band and best friends with my brother Luke, the one who died. After that happened, they (Jason and Danielle) moved in with me for a few months, and essentially took care of me...I was a total mess...I don't know what I would have done without them...
So many people came to our shower...between 30 and 40, with some of my friends even coming from out of town. It was so incredible to see everyone! And so nice to be celebrating something so good and happy. Some of my friends, when we did the "When was the last time we saw each other?" thing, the answer was my brother's funeral...my friends mean so much to me and this shower was so important to me because for a long time I felt like all there ever was around me was sadness...so wonderful to have something happy to celebrate. That's my dad in the middle:
Some interesting things were said to me at the shower. So many people told me I looked great pregnant, and while I'm sure it's mandatory to say that to the mother-to-be at a baby shower, it still made me feel really good, as I just feel so huge and frumpy these days. But apparently I'm not nearly as big as people expected, and am "all belly."
And on a different subject, one of my friends from college told me she always thought I'd be the first of everyone in our group to have children, she always saw me as a mother, said I was so nurturing and loving to everyone around me. Several people I know from my late teens/early 20s have made that same sort of comment, and it's interesting, because I SO wanted to get married and have children young...it just didn't work out that way for a number of reasons and there's no way to go back and change it....so just have to accept it, which is something I'm still working on...
Betsy's husband August made the most fabulous dinner ever (I wasn't even expecting a dinner...like I said, they went all out)...beef tenderloin and salad, cupcakes for dessert...so yummy. Here's the buffet table before all the food came out:
And the gifts...goodness...we got sooooooo many beautiful things; everyone was so incredibly generous. Here's my husband with teddy bears we received, demonstrating how he's going to hold both babies at once. Awww....
And here's Betsy (in black) at the end of the night, and our friend Habeeba who we also used to work with in San Francisco (and continue to work with now...it's so nice to work with your friends). Habeeba came out from Oregon and helped Betsy tons:
So really an incredible party and weekend all around. I feel so, so lucky to have such amazing people in my life.
Hope everyone has a great weekend! Thanks for spending some time here this week. :)
XOXO
Here a link to my post about Baby Shower #2 for anyone who's interested...