Jessica's Baby Shower Part I

OMG my best friend, Jessica, is 3 months pregnant with her first child!

Yea, that picture of her stomach is just a food baby, but that sonogram is real, although who knows which blob is which.  Sonograms remind me of the goo from Ghostbusters.  Remember it overflowing the sewers?  That goo is what I see when I look at a sonogram.  Not an adorable baby, but a gross goo blob creature.
ANYWAY, we are over the moon excited, but I'm more than bummed that I'll miss all the action, since the baby is due in August.  Since I'm the best friend, the responsibility of the baby shower is supposed to fall on me.  However, now it'll fall on her family and since they don't know all her friends, I decided to throw a sort of misfit shower with just a few people that wouldn't be invited to the actual shower (basically my family and friends...Jess knows them, of course).

Party planning is like my calling.  If I could do any job in the world, party planning would be in my top 3, for sure.  My other 2 would be police detective and book editor.  I know all of those are real jobs and don't sound all that crazy (like unicorn catcher or life coach), but for now they still only exist in my fantasy world.  Anyway, planning this party has been super fun!  The theme is yellow, gray and white with a chevron pattern and hearts everywhere!  Now, did I ask Jessica if she liked those colors for her baby shower or what exactly she wanted in a party?  The answer is: NO!  A good party planner just knows what works and what doesn't and she doesn't need to ask anyone ANYTHING!  Maybe it's better this isn't a real job, since I wouldn't really care what the client wants.  I would just end up doing what I want.  Besides, it's a surprise (did I forget to mention that?).  She thinks my mom is taking her out to lunch on that particular day.  It's so deceitful, I love it!
Let's look at some stuff I made ahead of time.

FAVORS

Since we don't know the sex/name of the baby yet, this is all I have to work with.  Oh well, people love stuff with their name on it, remember?  Ignore that I totally cut stuff crooked, I was tired.
I bought these jars on sale for the Meyer lemon body scrub favors, but they had this dumb chalk label on them:

I hated it, so i decided to scrape it off with a quarter:

I really had to put my back into it, and then I scrubbed the rest off with a sponge.  Voila!

Then I added my add-ons:

Then I filled them with the scrub:

Full Circle moment!  This is what I was making the body scrub for!  Now it all makes sense!  Here they all are after I finished and displayed them on my mother's china hutch:

Then I added shower poofs:

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but my favors are AWESOME!!!

Look how many lemons I balded:

That's 13!  To use up the lemons, I made: lemon cookies!

They were super delish, but not really all that healthy.  Sorry diet!

These aren't favors, but they're prizes (kinda the same category):

I basically picked out every yellow thing they sold at Bath and Body (which isn't much).  I have no idea if any of these smell good, but at least they matched.  I've got a hand soap/sanitizer, a body lotion/loofa (I got this loofa to go with my shower scrub BEFORE I decided to get every favor a loofa...oops!) and lastly a room spray/candle.  Not epic prizes, but at least they're not from the Dollar Store (not that I have anything against the Dollar Store, since that's where I got all the tissue paper and streamers I needed).

DECORATIONS

I made this banner:

Then I hung it up:

Kinda hard to see, which is probably a good thing because I cut my letters uneven on this too.  I think I need new glasses.

I also made these (before I had a theme) and it neither matches nor is it a true statement, but it's kinda funny:

They won't match, but we'll live.

I also got a guestbook (a cheap notebook):

I made the hearts for guests to write wishes for baby and advice for momma.  Here's the guest book table:

Check out the awesome, perfectly matching plates I ordered:

I also bought these white letters and duct-taped them:

I bought flowers that I put in mason jars with bald lemon slices:

This table is the decorating onesies table:

With this fabulous centerpiece:

I made these rain clouds (it's a shower, get it?):

Yea, don't feel bad, no one else really got it either.  I guess the heart shaped raindrops weren't the best idea, but oh well still cute.  I hung them up on my mom's pendant lights (which I'm sure she loved...NOT):

I covered these balloons with gray fabric I got at JoAnns (they were scraps, so super cheap!).

Here's the food table (sans food):

I even made labels for all the food:

Here is the drink station:

Finally, here's my entrance:

I was going for something that said, "BAM!  You're at a party!"  I like my decorations to scream things at people.
I also decorated my mom's chandelier:

Here's the whole room, once it came together:

That's it for decorations.  I made pretty much everything myself, including the table confetti.  The key isn't all the huge stuff people see when they first walk in.  The real trick is in the details because people don't just walk through a party; they hang out, have a seat and study the surroundings (esp. women).  So remember folks: where you really get them is in all the tiny nuances they only notice after staring at something for awhile.  Trust me, I've thrown a lot of parties and I know how this works.  My rule of thumb is not less is more, but more is more.  I'm pretty borderline tacky with my decorating, I like to take it to 11, if you catch my drift (Spinal Tap anyone?).

Stay tuned for Part II, where we catch all the action on party day!