Hi All!! I am back from the New York Gift Show and getting caught up. Phew! January is a bit of a blur... a lovely lovely blur.

Between gift shows and catching up after the holidays, I had the pleasure of throwing a dear friend a baby shower. I really really love doing events and parties and have not gotten too many chances recently so I was giddy that I got to do this one! Babies somehow always make me think of spring, so I was challenging myself to make the event seasonally appropriate as well as unique to the new mama (and papa...who was in attendance!). I also didn't want to just make everything blue because they are having a boy and I promised there would be no embarrassing games involving nipples of any sort.

These two love hiking and camping (well, I think he might like camping more than she...) and being outside and will no doubt be out and about on the trails and in the world with their new little boy. I decided to go with a "happy little camper" theme and keep it woodsy and casual.

It should come as no surprise to you at this point that I actually had many of the props and supplies that I used for the day. The vintage cooler was an etsy find many years ago and actually graced our Curly Girl catalog pages last year. I used my collection of vintage stadium blankets as tablecloths and borrowed some vintage wood boxes from the shop. A vintage picnic basket that my mom gave us was used as a centerpiece and a ball jar-esque water decanter was a wedding gift.

My friends and I made 's'mores pops' (super easy and cute) and 'campfire weenies' (crockpot cocktail weenies). The girls at Glutenous Minimus made this gorgeous chocolate cake with marshmallow layers to look like a tree stump. Complete with meringue mushrooms! Barbara at Derby Farm did the beautiful 'woodsy' flower arrangements.

We had sandwiches (provided by the new mama's sister) and chips and veggies and dip. All with champagne and Izzys of course! (Casual + Fancy = Love.) I did find a set of enamel camping mugs at an outdoors store that I had to have for the event and the party store had cute red plastic picnic food baskets that we used instead of plates.

One of my favorite parts was the "Happy Little Camper" garland that I made using sticks and yarn. Unfortunately I couldn't get a great photo of it because it hung between rooms. But here are a few shots of the process (ignore my messy kitchen):

Basically just made the letters with sticks and hot glued them together, wrapped them with random yarn to make it look like I made it at camp and glued them to a long piece of braided yarns. It is actually still hanging in my house it is so cute! Coach will probably start to wonder about it here in a minute.

Like I said, I did promise no embarrassing games, but a friend suggested something she had done at another shower that I thought was a really sweet idea. I labeled cards with numbers 1-30 and asked people to choose one. We handed out pens and then asked folks to write the baby a letter to be opened on the birthday that coordinated with the number on their card. So, for example, I got number 12 and wrote a letter to the little boy to be opened on his 12th birthday. It was a strangely moving experience, with lots of laughs and some good advice.

As a little take home, I begged asked Bridget over at Bake at 350 to make me her adorable camper cookies. I could not have asked for anything more perfect (and DELICIOUS...I may have had one or two...) or beautiful. They came beautifully wrapped all the way from Texas and were a total hit! In case you can't tell, I am plugging hard for her to come out of retirement (wink)! Even though she does not technically sell her beautiful creations anymore, she does have an amazing blog that you should check out tout de suite!

At the end of the day we sat around chatting (and eating the rest of the cocktail weenies) and talking about when the baby comes. We were surrounded by diapers and wrapping paper and champagne corks and good friends and love. My favorite kind of day!!

Thanks to my friends for their help with everything and to Lizzy for some of these photos!

Happy Monday! I would love to know what you think!

xoxo