Before I decided to go with the apple theme, I asked my friend for just some general ideas of things she liked. She told me she liked flowers...and then I started thinking. So after mulling it over and talking to a few of my close confidants, I came up with pink apple blossoms and green apples!
This is the poem I wrote for the invitation:With September coming and fall in the air,
There's some baby excitement we'd like you to share!
Marisa and Chad long to hold their baby girl,
Before the leaves change and fall with a twirl.
The season is ripe with anticipation!
The joy, the love, and the fascination
With all things tiny, pink, and sweet.
When she arrives they'll be swept off their feet
By the sight of her beautiful, soft baby flesh,
No doubt in their family she will perfectly mesh.
A tiny blossom who'll bloom by and by,
And Marisa will say, "She's the apple of my eye."
This was my first time ever doing a background for the food table. I have to say, I love how it draws everything in and makes the food table look more inviting!
I also made these yarn balloons! Like I said, I was so excited for this shower and I think I may have worked harder and longer on it than any other shower/party I've done before!
Our mini Apple Blossom trees!
How gorgeous are those bows?? I have a friend who is amazingly talented at making bows...but I don't think I needed to state the obvious!
Close-ups on a few of them. After the shower, they were given to the mother-to-be as part of her gift!
I made these letter blocks that doubled as decoration and part of one of our games! The game was a multiple choice question game. I split the guests up into four groups. For each question that I read, I would draw four different names. Those four people then came up and I asked a question that the teams had to answer using their blocks. For example, some questions were:Whose birthday is closest to the due date?
Who comes from the largest family?
Who was the biggest baby when she was born?
Each of the four women who had come up were holding a card that said A, B, C, or D and then the teams had to discuss who they thought would be the correct answer to the question. When they decided they had to hold their blocks up with the corresponding letter!
Another ongoing activity was making an alphabet book as a gift for the new baby! I had all the pages and crayons set out so that everyone could color a page at any point during the shower. Next step will be to make a cover and put a binding on it.
I found these apple chalkboards for 75% off just before the shower! They originally had red trim (easy to fix) and I think they added so much!
And, since I'm obsessed with making these caramel apples, they made an appearance at the shower! It's kind of hard to tell in the picture, but there's pink and light green white chocolate drizzled on all of them.
I had tons of help with all the food. I only did the apples, salad, and cake pops. Everything else was made by my awesome friends. Seriously, look at that cheeseball!
Take a second look at those apple parfaits. Now one more. They were that good. And that amazing apple cheesecake was our dessert. Honestly, these people are incredible. I have no words.
Why is it that the shot of the party table never looks as impressive as you think it's going to? After all the work that goes into it, it should look pretty spectacular!
I'm quite proud of this banner. I think it turned out great! Originally, I was going to try to cut everything out on my Cricut and piece it all together...then I got the brilliant idea to just print them off the computer on cardstock! SOO much easier. I seem to like doing everything the hard way first.
Paper Angry Birds! I found them online and thought they were so cute so I had to make them. They didn't really serve much of a purpose...but they still look good, right??
Angry Birds cheeseball! This was a last minute decision and I'm so glad it actually turned out!
I love love love all these bright colors! That's one of the reasons why I was excited to do this party.
I wish I could claim these birds, but I can't. I have a friend who can do just about anything 
Here's the banner I used for the kitty birthday party.
For my daughter's 2
For food, I got 
...and Swedish fish. I also had just a veggie and fruit platter. I'm just kicking myself because I had such a hard time coming up with good food ideas...until the day before the party! While I was at the store I started thinking of all the things I could have done but didn't have time for anymore. Making individual fruit pizzas with a cat face cookie cutter, creating a cat out of cut up veggies, popcorn ball cat faces! I could have done so much!
The first thing we did when the kids arrived was make collars out of Fruit Loops. The "kitties" had to put a 
After all that meowing I figured our kitties throats would be sore and they might need a drink!
We played Thirsty Cat and had a race to see who could drink all the water out of their bowl the fastest!
Then we played Yarn Toss! We sat in a circle again and passed around a ball of yarn while some music was playing. Whoever was holding the yarn when the music stopped won a prize!
These were our prizes! I used a stiff felt to make them so I think they were a little more difficult to make than if I had just used a regular felt but I think they kept their shape much better.
Here's the 
After everyone won a prize, I discovered a mouse in the kitchen! Then, we all looked outside and what did we see?? The whole backyard was overrun with mice! Our kitties rallied together to form a mouse hunting party and ran outside. They searched high and low and found every single one!
I made the mice with Easter eggs, yarn for the tails, stiff felt for the ears, 7mm googly eyes, and 1/4" black pompoms. I just hot-glued everything on. I think they turned out really cute!
After the mouse hunt, we went back inside for cupcakes and presents. I made these fondant cutouts for half of the cupcakes...
...and just used sprinkles to decorate the other half.
I made a mini cake for my daughter with a larger cutout to put on top of it. I'm still learning how to work with my 
I just love making banners! 