Having a large extended family is great. When you are a kid, your cousins are your best friends. If you are lucky, those friendships continue into adulthood. My cousin McKaela is one of the most fabulous women I know, and I was thrilled to find out that she and her husband Patrick were expecting their first child. They are my daughters godparents, and honestly, I can't think of two people who will make better parents to this lucky little person. They decided not to find out the gender of their little nugget, so a neutral baby shower was on tap. I settled on You Are My Sunshine as the theme because I love the color combination of yellow, gray and turquoise - I was so excited to find out during the planning that McKaela's dad, a professional musician, would sing this sweet tune to McK when she was just a nugget. It was meant to be :)
Invites were designed by Frilly Milly Events. The backs were a coordinating yellow and gray chevron, and the address labels were adorable wrap-around sunshines. Perfect introduction to the event to come.
I painted the canvases, thinking they would be cute as decorations for the shower and then could be reused as artwork over baby's crib. Love the way they turned out.
The shower was in the evening, love the way the sunlight came through our huge backyard trees, really transformed the whole space
No baby shower is complete without a bar, right? We just brought out our kitchen table for the event.
Paper Good by the Preppy Pink Pony
I copied the design from the canvas art for the sugar cookies. Guests could bring home their own little bags of sunshine. I used the same You are my Sunshine graphic from the invites for the gift bag tags.
Having the Shower in the evening did present a lighting problem - we had no way to plug in any lights, and the space is too large to use lighting from the house. So my solution was to hang Ball jars from the huge trees and put candles in them. They looked gorgeous, but we found out at dusk that you need a LOT of candles to light that large of a space :)
I loved the look of vintage turquoise Ball jars, but at between $10 - $20 each, there was no way I could afford (or even find) as many as I needed. So I bought new jars, and used a turquoise glass tint to make them look old. The process took 24 hours start to finish and included baking the jars, but they were well worth the wait. I now have 4 dozen gorgeous turquoise Ball jars for future events.
Mini Chalkboards were used for the food and beverage labels
Lemons, yellow tulips and yellow fabric were easy color-coordinating decorations.
Congratulations McK and Pat! Cant wait to meet my new favorite person :)
