Channeling my inner Martha

For the past couple weeks I've been secretly planning and crafting a surprise baby shower for my dear friend Kristen.  She is having her 4th child, a baby boy, in a couple of weeks and there is just no one more deserving of a little extra sprinkle of love and appreciation. 

We had told her we were going to have an EPIC girls dinner and murder mystery party, but instead, 11 of us young moms/gals from our church got together to eat some good food, shower her with gifts, pray for her, and celebrate this new life.  And the best part........she was actually surprised!  It was great.

Anyway, I'm not super craft on my own, but I am a great copycat.  So a fun dinner party/baby shower was the perfect excuse to get in touch with my inner Martha Stewart!  I loved the challenge of making things look "put together" on a tiny budget :-)  So here's a few projects I worked on.....

It was the perfect timing to incorporate the pumpkins you can find so cheap into the decor, but I didn't want to have the "usual look" of the orange pumpkin, so.......I used a deep red spraypaint.  It was super easy, took only a couple coats and a few minutes to finish 4 pumpkins.  I then cut off the stem, cut out a circle for the large tealight candle, touched it up with a bit more spraypaint, and it was done.  I really liked how it turned out and you can use the spraypainting pumpkin technique for a ton of different decor ideas.

I was lucky enough to get some clearance roses and lillies at Wal-Mart, and I loved the deep red and burnt orange.  I also found the two coordinating fabrics on clearance at Wal-Mart and got really small remnants of each for only $1.00 total.  I wrapped 2 baked bean cans and 2 tomato sauce cans that I'd used earlier after making taco soup for our small group.  They weren't perfect, but I thought they were cute.

I originally found the idea for this decor, here.  I already had the dixie cups and some of the scrapbook paper, and the other paper I got 4 for $1 at Michaels.  It took about 40 cups to fill 2 strings of white lights.  It took a little while to cut out the pattern of paper for each cup, and cut the "x" slit on each one for the light to fit through, but they looked really beautiful when they were lit up and strung above the area where the food was served.

The green vase is something I had bought from Ross a long time ago and one I use in our guest room.  The branches were picked in the field next to our house and spraypainted a darker brown.

 (ignore the flecks of dust on top of the runner)

I thought it'd be fun to have a table runner but didn't want to spend a lot of money on one.  So I had originally thought of the idea of using wrapping paper as a runner.  But I couldn't find any cheap enough or one that I liked that went with my color scheme.  So, I purchased a roll of brown postal/craft paper from the dollar store, cut it to size (about 13ft to fit across 2 large tables), and taped off about a 1 inch border with painters tape.  I grabbed leaves from our yard, dried them, then arranged them in a random pattern on the brown paper.  I taped them each down, then used dark spray paint to paint over them.  Once it dried, I removed the leaves and it left a "leaf shadow" on the paper almost like the way the leaves can make a shadow/imprint on the sidewalk.  Again, it wasn't perfect but it was really fun, though a bit time consuming, to make.  Nobody had any idea it was something I actually made myself at the party so I think that was a good sign!  And it only cost $1!

I also used some leaf candle holders from our bedroom, some other square votive holders I had in storage, a bit of ribbon, and some Scrabble tiles to spell out some cute baby sayings.  It all seemed to tie together well.

I made a bookmark for each lady to remind us how important it is to remember and be in God's Word and let it be always on to forefront of our minds and actions.  I just used leftover scrapbook paper and some red ribbon.

Of course, I'm a complete dork and forgot to take a picture of the whole setup before people arrived but I grabbed one quick picture right toward the end of the evening though I don't think I captured everyone in the shot and it doesn't show the gift table or food area.  I'm definitely no Martha but I think it was cozy.  And I'm able to use some of it for at least a little while on our own dining room table.

We only played one baby shower game because quite frankly, I think most of them are kind of silly, but I used this game found here, with a few variations and it was actually really fun.  Of course, winning candy makes everything fun!  But I didn't get a picture of the poster board with the game on it.

It was a really fun evening with friends.  I served a yummy salad (recipe here), the Pioneer Woman's recipe for lasagna (found here), French bread, and oreo ice cream dessert (we got to enjoy the leftovers tonight!)  Add some coffee with white chocolate mocha creamer and a whole lot of girl talk, and it was great.  Kristen is such a blessing in my life and I loved being able to do something fun for her.  Now, we're just anxiously awaiting the arrival of her baby boy!!!!