Secret Garden Baby Shower

A couple of weekends ago, I helped a sweet girl named Audrey throw a Secret Garden baby shower for our friend Jennifer.

That’s Audrey on the left, Jennifer & me.
The shower was a little challenging because I had never seen the fellowship hall where we were having it. And it was almost 45 minutes away from my house.
The second part that was challenging was I had never met Audrey. I had heard about her from Jenn but never met her face to face.
Overall, it went better than I expected. However…one of the BIGGEST challenges??

 
The biggest challenge was constructing this pergola out of sticks from our yard (or it may have technically been from our neighbors yard), loading it on top of our Nissan Xterra (from Carriage Nissan) without scratching it & transporting it ON the expressway 45 minutes away without it flying off! My heart was beating so fast on the ride over. I prayed so hard that it wouldn’t come off. My biggest fear was not that it’d ruin my shower decor plans but that pieces of it would fly off & hit a car behind me. Thankfully, it was 7am on a Saturday morning when I was transporting this so there weren’t a lot of people on the roads.
Did I make it?
Yep & finally was able to breath after 45 minutes! ;p The thanks goes to Mike, my husband, for doing an awesome job at securing it!

Here’s the before of the fellowship hall…

And here’s the after. Thanks to Audrey’s husband David, Audrey, Sandy (Jenn’s mom) & Gary (Jenn’s dad) we were able to hoist that pergola up to the ceiling & secure it.

I made yarn lanterns from brown yarn, big tissue paper pom poms & small ones. I’m planning on doing a video tutorial on the yarn lanterns soon. I found a GREAT shortcut & a way to make it less messy. The smaller tissue paper flowers are easy & I’ll post a tutorial on those soon, too.

This is the main food table. The shower was at 1:30pm so we went with heavy hors d’oeuvres & desserts. The brown sugar & bacon sausages (or weenies ;p) were still baking when I snapped this.

We served Tomato Basil Bruschetta (all the hors’ d’oeuvres Audrey made),

Ham & Cheese Crescents & the brown sugar bacon sausages.

 
Audrey told me to just bring a lot of things I already had. Once we got there, I ended up styling it. There wasn’t really a plan with this table, we just ended up winging it. The bird cage I had from a Goodwill trip a couple years ago.

These were our centerpieces. The vases I got from Goodwill for less than $1 each. I had burlap left from a project we did for our voiceover studio (I’ll have to show you guys pics when it’s done) so I wrapped the vases in that, tied purple ribbon around it & added a little key I got in the scrapbooking section.
The books were ones I had from my backyard wedding reception.
The flowers were just the cheap bunches. Audrey got several but we made them go further by adding greenery from outside.

We set the tables very simply. The sheets of paper behind the napkins are “Wishes for the Baby.” This had several fill in the blank spots for guests to fill out wishes or hopes for Jennifer’s baby. Audrey created those!

These were the favors for the shower. Audrey made those too. They’re prayers for Jenn’s baby.

Here’s the sweet table.

 

Audrey did this awesome looking diaper cake…and…

these beauties! She did a great job on the cake pops. She used tissue paper to create the flower look. Her husband & Gary (Jenn’s dad) cut out all of these. Not too bad, huh? You could also do this with cupcake wrappers. If you wanted to add some color to plain white wrappers, dip the edges in food color & let dry. You’ll have a beautiful two-toned flower.


These were not originally supposed to be displayed in the apothecary jars but we had to improvise. I did some with flowers on the top & some with the letter “E” on the top for Eden (the name of Jennifer’s baby).

 
The lemonade is from scratch. I’m sure Country Time is cheaper (or maybe not??) but I wanted it for taste sake. We were worried about it staying cold & didn’t want to put a bucket of ice out so I froze several disposable cups filled with lemons, limes, oranges & strawberries. I simply dumped my frozen fruit ice cups into the lemonade & it made it look pretty & kept it cool.

I had a whole bunch of mason jars left from our backyard wedding reception so we used those as glasses.

I did the same thing for the water as I did for the lemonade. I used disposable plastic cups, cut up lemons, limes & oranges & stuffed them into the cups. I then filled the cups with water & froze it. Once we were set up at the shower, I just dumped the frozen cups in the water.

Diaper wreath that Audrey made.


The activity the ladies did was create onsies for Eden.

Audrey & I bought some fabric remnants, attached the iron-on material to the back & cut out shapes & letters.

This made it easy for the ladies to choose their designs & then iron them on!

This is the beautiful mother to be & her stepdaughter Maggie.

I love this picture!

 
That’s Sandy on the right (Jennifer’s mom) & friend Angela.
You know what the funniest thing is? Jennifer took the pergola home to possibly use in the baby’s room! I had planned on just adding it to some woods around the area (not the pomps or yarn lanterns) but thought it was awesome that not only was it used as decor but also a little baby gift! 🙂
Speaking of baby gifts…I found something to get Jenn that was really neat (at least I thought). I got a book personalized for her daughter Eden. It’s called “God Loves Eden.” Throughout the whole book, it has Eden’s name. I loved the gift idea so much, I added a tab to my sidebar that you can link to that site.

This is the book I got Jenn for Eden but there are tons of books to choose from. You can personalize one for your child/ren or for a gift. Here’s 15% off “Who loves Me?” book by I See Me.
Take 15% off Who Loves Me?
 
Stop back by on Friday for great party inspiration from the Target dollar spot!

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