Tupps Family: Baby Shower and Decor!

Recently I was a co-hostess for a friend's baby shower. She was my Big during my sorority days at Delta Gamma and she is expecting a sweet baby boy any day now. My tasks for the shower were decorations and party favors. I just KNEW that a diaper cake was a must-have. But I had no idea how to go about making one. So I did some google homework and came up with a plan.

First, I needed supplies. Tecate (with limes, of course) and diapers. You would be surprised how many dirty looks I got at CVS while buying this combo of items. I mean really...if I'm buying diapers, surely that means "my baby" has already been BORN, so I'm not a horrible pregnant drinking mother. Duh. Just a horrible drinking nursing mother, for all you know!

I spread out in the living room - thrilling my husband to no end.

Each of these NINETY-TWO(!!!!!) diapers had to be rolled and secured with a rubber band around the middle. That took awhile! Luckily I had booze.

Wow! That's a lot of diapers - but really, not even half!

Then each rolled diaper had to be tied with blue and white gingham ribbon - this was to hide the rubber band!

Each finished diaper looked like this:

Then it was time to start building. I got a cardboard cake round from Hobby Lobby to use as my base. First I hot-glued a large bottle of baby powder to the center of the board. (Actually, the first time I missed and had to unstick it and measure out the center, because when I eyeballed it, it looked wonky and lopsided). So this is take 2.

I used a large rubberband to hold the first layer of diapers to the powder bottle. Then another larger rubberband (from our dinner asparagus - look at me, so clever!) to do the next layer.

Aaah - taking a break and sitting on the couch - wood floors hurt your bum after a few hours of diaper rolling!

This is it after two layers were added on the bottom. See how the baby powder will act as the next tier's base as well??

Then I added a layer on the second tier, and secured with a rubber band. Also at Hobby Lobby, I found a gigantic oversized baby bottle (I think it may also be a bank??) to top the cake. I hotglued the bottom of the bottle to the top of the baby powder - this would become my third and final tier.

Next I added another layer of diapers to the bottom tier and wrapped a 1" wide ribbon to the bottom of the first tier, securing with hot glue. Also note that I made sure the be-ribboned diapers were on the outside of the cake to up the "finished" factor of the cake. This last layer of diapers was really tricky, since 1) I didn't have a large enough rubber band for that and 2) you can't use hot glue on the diapers themselves since they are supposed to be useful to the expectant mother!! So I had to get Ryan to help me with that step, as the ribbon has to be pulled taut in order to keep the diapers from falling out!

Now repeat with the top two layers. When all was said and done, there were three layers on the bottom tier, two on the second tier and one on the top.

DONE! (Almost!)

Here is a picture of the cake on shower day - I went to Pinkitzle and bought tons of blue M&Ms to fill the bottle with! I waited to add those til the last minute, since I hauled this cake from my house in OKC to the shower location - a park in Dallas! (Oh, and the bottom of the cardboard round was covered with the same ribbon as each layer of the cake - thanks to another co-host (and my Grand-Big) Ms. Darcy Ford! **Snaps**)

That was definitely the most time-consuming decoration. I also painted these cute little wooden letters I got at Hobby Lobby. I tried to match the shower invitation with the colors for the letters (I will scan a pic of the invite in later - ooh, it was SO cute - I got them from Tiny Prints and they were precious!!!)

Back to the letters - I painted them all white first, and then added the blues and browns with paint pens.

A few more beers were needed - haha!

And the result:

AWWWWWWWW. Next I made signs to alert people that they'd arrived at the party! I found these in the clearance aisle at Hobby Lobby and they were perfect with the shower colors. I just wrote on them in brown paint pen and done!

OH! And I also bought these yard stakes to hold these signs - I bought blue spray paint and Ryan sprayed them blue! These stakes held these signs and some balloons. Did you know HL sells mini helium tanks? Well they do and they are awesome!!! Here is the finished result:

I also found a super cute banner on etsy for the shower - here are pics of it:

The set-up for the shower was pretty easy - since it was held at an outdoor pavillion, we really only had to add tablecloths and balloons to make it festive! But it was SUPER windy on the day of the shower, which made me glad I 1) got flowers for the tables and 2) got weights for the edges of the tablecloths. They were amazingly helpful - I found them at (guess where? ) Hobby Lobby and they were miracle workers. You just clip them on the edges of the tablecloths and they hold it in place!

The park was beautiful and everyone seemed to have a good time. Plus, Cathy got lots of cool stuff for Baby C!

Finally, my favorite part: COOKIE FAVORS! I went to One Smart Cookie, which I believe is a franchise type store, to get these favors. I had her made little blue onesies with C on the front. They were big!! And had the cutest little details, like silver balls as the little snaps at the bottom of the onesie. Too cute! Here's the not cute part: I paid to have them individually wrapped in cellophane and tied with blue ribbons at the top. Ummm...these are just laying in a box. Which is how I got them. But after I pitched a good old-fashioned fit, the nice lady at the store gave me the stuff for free so that I could wrap them myself. I saved 50 cents a cookie this way, but still! I picked these up Friday afternoon, and was heading for Dallas Saturday at 7 am. I knew what my Friday night entailed! HA!

Wrapping cookies! It was hard! Those suckers wanted to shift all around in their bags, making tying the ribbon kind of hard! Luckily, Ryan did the heavy lifting on this task.