Immediate Notice to Mother-in-Love and close friends: it’s not my baby!  I will not use my blog to announce to you when that time comes; count on it.  It’s my friend Nicole’s baby, and it was her party.  Ready?  Here we go!

The non-pregnant gals in this picture, Janene (left), Krystal (right), and I, planned the baby shower together.

The baby’s gender is unknown so we picked “rubber duck yellow” and “toy boat blue” as our theme colors–and then all wore those colors too!  Funny thing: Nicole didn’t know what the theme was and she still matched.  Her sixth sense is for parties, I swear.

Vintage baby furniture greeted the guests when they walked in, along with a vintage door-turned-chalkboard Janene found.  (Or maybe made?)  She hung a little line of pregnancy pictures across it for sweet personalization.  I love that silhouette picture in the middle, don’t you?  As guests came in they put their gifts in the crib.

Because I’m me I have to zoom in on the flowers!  I mixed pale blue hydrangea with yellow tulips and “creme kiss” roses, with seeded eucalyptus as the filler.  I wanted it to be sort of rustic but still sweet and related to the theme colors.

A matching arrangement in a larger Mason jar sat on the food table, and what a food table it was!

Between the three of us we pulled together a sinful menu of sweets: fruit pizzas, cheesecake bites, chocolate-dipped pretzel rods, pirouette cookies, & a peanut butter ball with apples, crackers, and pretzels.  To drink we had cucumber water, ginger ale/cranberry cocktail with lemon slices, and coffee.

We served the drinks out of clear Mason jars with striped paper straws that added tons of fun to the table.  But upstairs the fun was only beginning.  After guests had a while to graze and chat, we moved downstairs.  The guys (our hubbies) went to town with the short to-do list we gave them during party prep.  We asked them to hang paper lanterns, thinking they’d suspend them all from the ceiling, maybe varying the heights a little if we were lucky.  Instead…

…they designed some sort of installation art in the corner.  I don’t know all the details, but they used small metal easels as anchors (the hosts are professional photographers, which explains why a multitude of small metals easels was lying around) and wove twine between the anchors and the ceiling to make a structural web.  It was amazing.

There were more flowers here too.  The bouquet on the card-writing table was yellow alstroemeria, white stock, and green hypericum berries.

On the opposite side of the room, a streamer curtain blocked off the home office.  The streamer had a mix of muslin, burlap, lace, ribbon, and crepe paper.  It was very textural in person.

At the end of the night, the parents-to-be took home a bundle of paper lanterns and a passel of presents to feather the nest for their new little one.

He or she is due next week, so watch this blog for the announcement!