A Nature-inspired Baby Shower

This past weekend was one I've been looking forward to for quite a while now. On Friday, I hopped on a plane to Munich and on Saturday, I threw my bestest friend and her husband a co-ed baby shower for her soon-to-come baby boy!

 How cute is Emily's bump?

I went with a nature-inspired theme with simple decorations based on the color scheme I came up with for the hand-painted invitations (top picture).After all, most of the attention should be focused on the glowing mom- and dad-to-be!

Emily has a great group of American girlfriends in Munich and they each brought some food for us all to nibble on throughout the afternoon. We sipped on blood-orange and pomegranate mimosas - both alcoholic and virgin versions - as well as beer for the men-folk.

Our main activity of the afternoon was to create an ABC baby book for the little man. I left the tools to do so on the coffee table for people to create at their leisure. People came up with some awesome drawings for their letter of choice (P is for papa - with beer in hand - was my favorite). Now baby will have a bilingual book to learn the alphabet from filled with illustrations from people who already can't wait to meet and snuggle him.

As mentioned, I got a lot of help with the food, but still decided to whip up a few goodies myself. I opted for cake batter truffles and s'mores cookies, each of which I prepared ahead of time, froze, and then packed in my check-in luggage. (For the cookies, I froze the dough and baked on the day of). I was super stoked with how easy they were to transport and by how little mess I had to make the day of the party.

The other game was "Guess the belly size" by measuring out a piece of string. Emily loves games, so I knew she wouldn't take any offense to this silly, traditional shower game. It turned out to be a blast and absolutely hilarious how wrong some people (me included....) were in the estimations! And we had a photo finish between three boys for the winning piece of string. The winner's strategy, we found out, had been to simply measure his own belly!

I had each guest bring a baby picture of themself (can you spot Natalie and me?) to hang up, so we could have Emily try to guess who's who. Not an easy task!

That little munchkin, top left, was by far the cutest guest at the party.

We also surprised the mom-to-be by setting up a videochat date with her mom to join us for a bit of the shower, since she couldn't be there in person. She got to watch us figure out the winner of the "Guess the belly size" game (which makes for great entertainment) and be with us as Emily and Artur opened their presents. I couldn't help but squealing at all the teeny tiny clothes they got.

In baby's room, I also set up a photobooth with some fun props for everyone to commemorate the day with. Some pictures from that, plus a DIY on the coffee-filter flowers and watercolored invitations, to come later this week.

Happy last week of work before maternity leave, Emily!