Hellobee

For some reason most of my closest friends live far away, but I didn’t think twice when I told my best friend I would be more than happy to host her baby shower! (She lives about 6 hours away from me.) Although this meant I would have to make a short trip away from my 3-year-old and 4-month-old, I figured I could probably ship most things through Amazon. I was super excited about this baby!

My friend is a designer at Google, so after I started browsing Pinterest I started to get pretty nervous! The one good thing was that most of her guests were not married and didn’t have kids. They had no idea what to expect so the bar was set pretty low. I knew it was a little risky to completely rely on Amazon reviews to shop for baby shower items, so I had the bigger supplies shipped to my friend’s house and took the rest with me in my carry on. Here are the items I ordered online to be shipped to her house:

• drink dispenser
• cups, plates and utensils
• baby shower napkins
• decorative poms
• small helium tank (so great how you can order this on Amazon!)
• balloons (various sizes)
• cake topper
• fake green ivy
• fabric markers for the onesie game

Since my friend is a designer, most of her guests were also designers so the onesie game turned out to be pretty amazing!

The items I chose to bring with me on the plane:

• blank onesies purchased through Buy Buy Baby in person (with coupons, of course!)
• star garland
• tablecloth
• sign/banners
• tape/ribbon
• game supplies and rewards (Starbucks giftcards)

I asked another friend to pick up fresh flowers, champagne and a cake. Luckily I was able to borrow a car to pick up donuts, breakfast items from Trader Joes and a coffee traveler from Starbucks. Even though I got started at 7:00am, I was still scrambling to get everything ready by 11:00am! I forgot to tie in the time of getting ready myself and squeezing in a pumping session.

My pregnant friend dislikes super girly and pink decor so we chose gender neutral colors, gold, turquoise, and white. Even though I am the creative type, the part of your brain where you’re good at designing a backdrop for a party is totally not the same thing! It definitely takes a certain type of person to know how to organize a decorative table. I had no idea there was so much decision making involved in the layout! If I had more time, I would have loved to stop by some stores for a cake or dessert tray/holder. It’s one thing to envision it all in your head, and another thing to have them all in front of you to arrange in real life.

Gorgeous mom to be, frumpy mom of two! (Thank goodness for Instagram filters!)

If you’re a decorating newbie like me, here are some of my thoughts after throwing this shower from out of town:

• Fresh flowers help so much! Just getting some nice green leaves and baby’s breath will make a huge improvement. Even though our floral arrangement skills were quite horrible, from a distance it still made the table look pretty good! It’s probably a good idea to look at some bouquet pictures beforehand because winging it on the spot is kind of difficult!
• You can never go wrong with too much food. I got donuts as a filler to decorate the table and give people extra food to munch on. We had plenty of leftover food so people just took it home!
• The giant letter balloons are difficult to find but are well worth the extra cost! These “BABY” balloons were so enormous. I thought they were almost too big, but for a large space they actually looked quite nice! Make sure you have some string for all the balloons. (We almost forgot this!) We also needed double sided tape to hold the balloons in place against the wall in addition to the string.
• If you’re traveling as a pumping mama, I didn’t know that my pumping tote didn’t count as a carry on since it’s a “medical device.” I had shoved it in my luggage and wasted so much space!
• Save those receipts! I ended up having a lot of onesies and decorations leftover so I took them back to return.
• Those darn decorative poms took forever to open up! I should have worked on them the night before or chosen a less time consuming decorative item. The concept is easy (just open them up layer by layer) but it’s easy to mess up and it takes about 5-10 minutes to work on each pom!
• Allot some time in your schedule to actually get ready yourself. I was in my pajamas until 10:45am and guests came at 10:55am!

Honestly the outcome was not exactly what I had wanted at all because of the time crunch – I flew in late Friday evening and left Saturday late afternoon. I felt frazzled and haggard trying to organize everything, but what else is new! Isn’t that what we do on a daily basis with our kids? I told my beautifully decked out pregnant friend to take a good look at me – frumpy and disheveled – and to know that I came as a representative of what a real mom looked like. I had only packed my maternity jeans and nursing top and totally forgot to bring something nice! The most realistic mom quality about this was that I didn’t even care. That’s what good friends are for, right?? It almost felt like being a bridesmaid again – give all the love and attention to the bride/expectant mom to be!

The guests oohed and ahhed at the adorable decor, played the games and left with full bellies. I think considering the time frame, that’s all I was really hoping for. And of course, the expecting couple had a great time!