b is for baby! super cute baby shower invite with an alphabet theme

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I searched everywhere for the right invitation for my sister's baby shower. I knew what I was looking for and I just couldn't find it.

I wanted to make it myself but I lean more towards cutting and pasting of actual paper and that just wasn't going to work in this case. I needed computer design skills.

Sadly, it is a language I do not speak.

Then I thought to myself, hmmm, hold on a second here, I have a super cool graphic designer lady living right next store. Maybe she can help.

Yay! I am so lucky to have Bethany Ng as a neighbor!

She turned my general sketch of a tree with the alphabet "growing" from it with a few cute critters into a sweet reality that was even better than I imagined. It was so nice to work with her.

Check out her website and blog here.

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This was the top portion of the back side of the invite. The information for the party was listed underneath.

It's next Saturday, so I'm geared up for my east coast trip and getting all of my baby shower ideas together:

Alphabet theme (as you can see!) in bright hues of pink, orange, blue and green, cake pops as favors, colored cupcakes in baby food jars, A-Z necessities for the new parent, cookies, a fantastic party decoration that I found online that has to be kept top secret until the big day, and a few other treats for my very prego sis.

These images belong to Bethany Ng. Copyright 2011. Be nice. Don't steal. And be sure to give credit where credit is due!

composition book remake=fun party favor!

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Yes, rainbow sprinkle notebooks!

I had a vision of binding small notebooks of plain paper for each of the kids as part of the party favor. The cover would obviously reflect our colorful theme. I wasn't sure exactly how much that would cost but while browsing the back to school section I found a deal I couldn't resist: composition books for 40 cents. I'm pretty sure I couldn't beat that.

Enter 8.5 x 11 prints of my rainbow sprinkle photo, xtreme glue stick, and x-acto knife. Using the glue stick I covered the entire surface of the front and back cover of the composition book and then placed my printed page on top, pressing firmly to make sure it was attached at the very edges. I then cut off the excess paper with the sharp blade.

I had planned on using colored duck tape over the black binding but as it turned out, that glue worked really well and I liked how it looked with the white border and the black. Great! Less work!

Just like that this plain old composition book has been transformed into table decoration and party favor!

rainbow sprinkle party hats

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When asked what she wanted for her birthday, Clementine replied "Cake and hats."

Easy enough! Does that mean we should return the tricycle?

What's a party without hats?

I took a picture of a bunch of rainbow sprinkles and printed it out on heavier weight paper. Instead of starting from scratch and getting my own cardboard and elastic, I opted for the time saving route of using store bought hats. Deconstruction and reconstruction! I traced the shape, cut it out and then glued it to the hat. To make them a bit more festive I added the garland around the base with some hot glue.

Hats? Check!

Now for the (cup)cake...

a woodland themed first birthday party

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It was a very happy birthday for the little miss!

mushroom cupcakes

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mushroom-cupcakes

I made mushroom cupcakes for the party.  Edible table decor!

For the cake I used Martha Stewart's yellow buttermilk cupcake recipe, which I had used once before and they were amazing. I decided to make these the day before to save time and to be honest, they were a little dry. Ok, very dry. (Maybe my storage method wasn't exactly airtight.) But they looked really cute! We just ate the tops. Anyway, any white or yellow cake would be fine. I used unbleached kraft cupcake liners as the mushroom base.

Something I learned from this project is how hard it is to achieve true red frosting.  I was about to give up on my pinky color when I realized if I dipped the cupcake in red sugar, pink was transformed to a lovely red! Yay! I piped on the white dots. Viola!