The Library Baby Shower

Once upon a time. That's the start of an awesome book, right? Well, it's also the start to an awesome baby shower! 

I have some friends that I have known since we were 8 years old. In 5th grade, I went to a different school, yet somehow, we managed to stay friends all through Jr. High, High School, and into college. Now we are married and having babies!

I jumped the gun (I guess), so Talina is the first of my friends from way-back-when to have a baby, and it's a girl! I co-hosted with our good friend Lena and we decided on a library themed baby shower. The goal of this shower is to give the mom-to-be a good start to her children's library! 

It was a lot of fun to make the invites. I staged the picture, then edited the words right on top using picnik.com. Do you see Hero's addition? He's really into Pokemon right now.

Lena was in charge of location (it being at her house) and the food. Which left the fun decorating to me! (Thanks, Lena, for letting me have free reign on this.) We are not the game-playing type of shower-throwing people, so I put a bit more effort into the decorations to really make it special.

I searched for "book shower" on the internet, and discovered that Martha Stewart had this great book garland idea for a "Once upon a baby shower"! Wow. I'm cool like Martha Stewart, having a book shower... We decided to make it a bit more colorful, rather than the all pink that the original suggested. Lena and I spent a night ripping apart an old book and making these little ones.

I'll post more about the making this later.

I made a few more items, too. It turns out that ripping up books is very satisfying. So I made a wreath, a tray, and a canvas art piece.

I spent an good amount of time hunched over my glue gun (about 4 hours) making this book wreath, using this tutorial. I made a few changes to it, and will post more about that later.

The tray and the art were made with an old book, Mod-Podge and a little black paint. I also made more of my baby food jar party favors, this time adding the round magnets that hold so much better.

I'll show you exactly how I did these two items in later posts as well.

Here is Talina with all her new books! She got so many great books, as well as the usual and useful baby clothes, blankets and burp cloths.

It's amazing to me that we all met 18 years ago, and now we are here. Congratulations, Talina! I can't wait to met your sweet little girl!