Little Pumpkin Baby Shower Part 4: Fall Foods

So what's a party without some food? Below are the snacks from the Fall Little Pumpkin baby shower I helped with last Fall. 

Our fall food buffet at the shower. Lots of goodies here!

These are called so many different things. My family calls them "hammy sammys." I've heard them called "sassy tailgate sandwiches" and "ham and cheese melts, too." They basically consist of hawaiian rolls, ham/turkey, pepper jack/swiss, baked with a mustard/soy/poppyseed glaze. So rich and delicious!

One of the hostesses made some rotel sausage cups. They were delicious. Cream cheese, rotel, sausage (I think), and topped with cheese. Popped these guys like candy.

These super-cute pudding shooters were so easy to make! Vanilla pudding layered with fall-themed sprinkles and topped with crushed oreos. Um...who wouldn't love these. They were so stinkin' good.

Tried out the infamous "3-ingredient cookies." Result? Meh. Decent. I think I'd use the caramel kisses next time. I'm not a fan of the pumpkin ones myself. 

Next up? Activities!

Little Pumpkin Baby Shower Part 3: Fall Decor

This Little Pumpkin Shower was so much fun to give. See the super cute invites here and the adorable pumpkin diaper cake here.

One of the hostesses found her inspiration for this super-cute pumpkin setup here.

Another of the talented hostesses made a banner with the Little Pumpkin's name. She used jute to attach it to her wonderful fall mantle.

   

Next up...food!

Little Pumpkin Baby Shower Part 2: Pumpkin Diaper Cake

I've had a lot of questions about this diaper cake from the shower.

It IS made completely of diapers (and rubber bands)!

Here's a quick illustrated tutorial (because of course I didn't take pictures as I was experimenting). 

Pumpkin Diaper Cake

You'll Need

Diapers (see below for details)

Rubber bands - thin larger ones are better

Orange Tulle

Brown Tulle/Fabric Scrap

Green Wired Ribbon

Step 1: Pick your diapers. I used Pampers (mom's choice) in sizes 1 and 2 (per mom's request). Really the size and pattern of diaper don't matter as they'll be covered with tulle for this cake. I ended up using about one box for this project (some 1s and some 2s). 

Step 2: Roll your smaller diapers. Leave them folded, and start from the open/top end. Roll toward the crease. This seems to hold the diapers in place better. If you're making a cake without tulle, it'll give you a pretty white diaper (with most brands). 

Step 3: Add a small rubberband around each diaper roll. I do about 10 of these at a time before going to the next step.

Step 4: Bundle about 5 diaper rolls together and start forming a circle for your cake.

Step 5: Add 1-2 big rubber bands around your large bundle. This can be as large/small as you'd like. There's no real exact number count it has to be. 

Step 6: Stack two bundles of approximate equal size on top of each other. Don't try to line them up like in the illustration, because you'll go crazy. Stacked is good enough.

Step 7: Add bulk to your pumpkin to make it more of a sphere instead of a cylinder. Use rubber bands to attach 1-2 rolls to the stacks. Just mess with them until they look right. That's the real secret to this project. When in doubt, add more rubber bands.

Step 8: Take your larger diapers (still folded but not rolled) and layer them around the outside of your cake, overlapping so you can't see the rolled diapers. Tuck the bottoms under the cake and use rubber bands to secure. You may need one rubber band toward the top and one toward the bottom.

Step 9: Do the same to the top so you have a pumpkin-shape. If it still looks like a cylinder, add more rolls under the flat diapers or flat diapers in the middle area.

Step 10: Wrap the diapers in tulle. I found that wrapping North and South worked best. This takes a LOT of tulle to get an opaque look-just fyi.

Step 11: Add a stem to the pumpkin and tie green wired ribbon around the top for the vine. I used one diaper roll covered in brown tulle. I just worked it down into the top of the pumpkin.

Ta-da! Sorry for the illustrations instead of actual photos. 

Little Pumpkin Baby Shower Part 1: Invitations

Last fall, prior to my blogging hiatus, my friends and I threw a gorgeous Little Pumpkin baby shower for one of my best friends. She was due end of October, so it was a perfect way to celebrate the Fall! Here is our inspiration board on the Pin website.

For invitations, we decided to go custom with the Little Pumpkin theme. Off to HobLob/Mike's I went to search high and low for rustic, fall, boy-appropriate papers.

I created the invitation (as usual) in powerpoint. I consider this the ghetto-rigged version of invitation-creation, but hey-it works.

Our inspiration papers were deep brown glitter, baby blue, mustard, burnt orange, and copper in solids and graphic prints. My personal favorite combination is the mustard graphic print with baby blue accents!

The great thing about this is the endless possible mix-and-matches. We took full advantage of this!

More to come!

Cute as a Pumpkin!

Just a quick stop in to share the CUTEST diaper cake! I may be a little biased, but this one is just too sweet!

Update! I added a tutorial here. 


Yup! It's totally made of diapers (even the stem)! It's wrapped in orange and sparkle brown tulle for a pumpkin-y finish. I was surprised how easy this was to make. Just roll diapers like a regular cake and use flat diapers on the outside to shape. Add some tulle and curly ribbon for a vine. Ta-da!

Spring Bunny Baby Shower Part 4: Wishing Tree for Baby

I love Spring. Only slightly more than Winter. There is absolutely nothing like a cool Spring night. I also love all the new growth. I also own zero Spring decorations. I have enough Christmas decor for three houses. Go figure.

Thankfully, one of my wonderful co-workers offered to host the shower at her lovely home. She has Spring decorations. Beautiful ones at that. In fact, she made a super cute rag wreath for her front door just this year. Anyway, add some fun touches with a beautiful home and you end up with a beautiful shower.

I just love this wishing tree for Baby W. My co-worker had a "less-than-living" tree in her front yard that she "borrowed" a branch from. Add in some silvery spray paint, rocks, and a cute vase...voila!

The instruction card is worded like this: "Please take a moment to write a wish for Baby W... on the back of one of these birdies. Then, place the birdie on the tree for A... and A... to read now and Baby to read later."

The wishing birdies were cut with a Silhouette in some cute pink paper. They were too cute!
PS- I love those bunnies with the tulips. Too cute!!

Spring Bunny Baby Shower Part 3: Diaper Cake

So, I feel like I do the same thing for every baby shower, but diaper cakes are stinkin' cute! You can see my first official attempt at making one here.

For this cute spring bunny shower, the color scheme was pink, grey, and white (to make sure our decor matched Baby's room). My co-workers and I made this diaper cake in about 45 minutes from start to finish (not including the sock-flowers that were made by another co-worker).

We started with a 14", 10", and 6" cake round. We used Size 1 and Size 2 diapers and a ton of rubber bands. There's tons of tutorials out there, so I won't bore you with the details.

Tips for a Cute Diaper Cake

• Use labeled diapers (like swaddlers) or mark your diapers with different colors of rubber bands (e.g., reds=size 1, blue=size 2). This takes the headache out of Mom's task of unrolling.
• Carefully roll your diapers. I've found that rolling from the open end to the closed end results in a more uniform roll. 
• When forming your cake, make sure the "seam" of the rolled diaper is on the inside. This makes for a much more uniform cake.
• Lots and lots of rubber bands to hold groups of diapers together.
• Squish it until it looks right. Keep pushing on your diaper groups until they make the shape you want.
• Fill in the middle of your cakes with anything you want: extra diapers, baby gifts, tissue paper, etc.
• Use tulle by the roll to contain your diaper layers. They sell super cute sparkly, lacy, and shimmery tulle rolls at that HobLob place.
• Use paper shred as "filler" on top of each layer to hide the diaper tops. This also helps hide any cardboard from the cake rounds. Plus it's cute.
• Add cute baby stuff.

Spring Bunny Baby Shower Part 2: Food

For my friend's shower we decided to go with everyone's favorite meal...brunch! I mean, who doesn't love breakfast food all day long?

Seeing as how this shindig was a Spring themed shower for ladies we wanted to keep the food fun! We opted for some standard brunch staples like sausage balls. The hostess (who hosted us at her beautiful home) created a wonderful twist on standard pinwheels-- Green chile bacon pinwheels. YUM.

Chiles + bacon + cream cheese = I'm there. Add crescents, and I'm stealing the whole pan.

Next up came the mini pancakes. These were just too terribly cute! I stumbled upon some teensie forks at that PartyC place. I knew I had to use them.

With the pancakes, we served some berry butter. You can find the awesomely easy and fool-proof recipe here at PW. Not the prettiest thing to look at unless you have Ree's awesome food-stylin' and photographin' skillz, but absolutely delish none the less.

To balance out all these yummy brunch-carbs, we decided to add in some yummy strawberry yogurt parfaits. I'm not the biggest fan of yogurt (texture aversion), but I'll eat these any day of the week. Simply layer strawberry yogurt, a sprinkle of granola (or that JustBunches stuff), and some berries. Include one of those teensie spoons found next to the teensie forks at that PartyC place. Ta da!

On to the sweets! Of course we had some sugary snacks, too. My super-talented co-worker Jessica of JB Cakes and More made the beautiful nest egg cupcakes. Love me some malted milk speckle eggs!

Along with the beautiful cupcakes, I made Round 2 of Peeps Pops. See Round 1 here! I paired it with a cute little watering can. So very Spring!

The food was all so delicious! In the future I think I may try some mini cereal shots or something of that sort, too. Little shots of dry cereal and shots of flavored milk to pour into them. That sounds yummy, too.

Happy Spring!

Spring Bunny Baby Shower Part 1: Invitations

A lovely coworker of mine is having a little girl soon! I am so excited for her. Three of us at work got together and hosted a fun, little work shower for her. I was in charge of the invitations. We decided to echo the colors from her baby's room. Pink, silver/gray, and white.

The shower theme was a mix of spring, bunnies, and chicks. The invites were 6x6 squares (to make the most use of the back silver paper), and all the paper was purchased at HobLob (50% off of course!).

I used my Sillhouette SD to cut out the bunny shapes at the top of the invite. How cute are those bunny-tooshies?