Baby Shower!

Our baby shower was last Sunday (which also happened to be Super Bowl Sunday.... whoops.... so we ended up having a baby shower/super bowl party), and we had a great time.  It was great seeing people I have not seen in a long time, and it means a lot to me that people are willing to take time out of their busy schedules to be at my baby shower.  I only wish that we had more time to chat with everyone!

My sister hosted the party and the party really came out a lot nicer than I expected.  When the time comes for me to return the favor for her, I don't think I can pull off a shower quite as nice!

From Baby Shower

We had about ~32 people total, which is a pretty large crowd to squeeze into our moderately-sized living room.  I was concerned that not only would people not fit, but there wouldn't be enough seats for everyone.  Our couches seat about 8-11 people (depending on how "friendly" you are), and we also pulled 6 dining chairs and 3 office chairs into the living room as well.  So that is a grand total of 19 seats,  which means that a total of 13 people would be seat-less!
But in the end, it all worked out and I think it was due to people taking turns standing and also people trickling in at different times.

From Baby Shower

We set up some tables and lawn chairs in our front yard for the activities and games since we thought that people wouldn't fit and burst out of house.  That didn't happen so a lot of the games were done indoors, but we still did the "decorating-onesies" activity outside, since it's messy anyways.  I really love all the creative onesies that people made -- who knew all my guests were artists?

From Baby Shower

I already blogged about all the food served during the shower on my cooking blog, so go over there to read about that.  In a nutshell, we served "afternoon tea" food such as: sandwiches, scones, bite-sized desserts, and Darjeeling tea.  We also served fresh fruit, lemonade, and sangria (alcoholic) to add more variety. 
Some guests thought that the food was catered/ordered, but nope!  It was home made!

Grace also ordered this really adorable cake from Kee Wah Bakery.  How did she know that fresh strawberry Chinese cake was my favorite?  ;)

From Baby Shower

I really didn't expect there to be any decorations (to be honest, I forgot that homes are typically decorated for parties), but Grace bought balloons and streamers to decorate both the indoors and outdoors of the house.  Credit goes to Grace, Kevin, Brenda, and Jeff for doing all the decorating.  =)

From Baby Shower

For the games, I truly hate stupid baby shower games like the "no crossing your legs and arms during the baby shower" game (how is that even a game?), or the "let's see who can eat 'poop' out of a diaper the fastest" game, or the "let's feed each other baby food while blindfolded" game.
Grace kept the games on the tasteful side and did the "baby mad libs" game, the "who can drink out of the baby bottle the fastest" game, the "guess mom's tummy size" game, and also did a diaper raffle. 
(I really like the "list the baby name of animals" game (you know me, I love animals!) but unfortunately, we had no time for that.)
Grace and I made prizes for the games and we had so many left over!  Makes me wish we designated more winners.

From Baby Shower

After all the games and activities were over, people mingled and stayed behind to watch the Super Bowl game.  Chips, salsa and carrot sticks were served.
I was surprised by how easy clean up was.  I'm glad with so many people over, people were still able to keep the house fairly clean. 
However.. we did find 1 random strawberry jam smudge on a door........

To view all the photos from the baby shower, go here:

Baby Shower