Celebrating a New Addition!

I’ve got some exciting news with today’s post (perhaps only exciting to me and my immediate family, but I thought I’d share anyway). My sister-in-law welcomed a new bundle of joy to the family last week – a beautiful baby girl, Sophia. She’s super cute, happy and healthy! But, before I show you a photo of the beautiful newborn, let’s go back a week or so.

Today’s blog topic was actually planned to be posted last week, before the baby arrived, but, as you can see, it didn’t! So, even though the baby is already here, I wanted to share some of the fun that occurred before she arrived!

Logan and I had decided to throw his sister (and her husband and daughter) a little surprise baby party. Ok, so it was pretty much a baby shower, but since it is their second child (and showers aren’t customary for a second child) we had been calling it a baby party! And, since they already have a lot of what they need for the newborn, we didn’t intend to shower them with gifts, but instead just celebrate the new life that we would all be welcoming into the family very soon. And, because they had been trying for a second child for quite sometime, this new baby is such a blessing and worth celebrating!

So, a couple Saturdays ago, we hosted the little get together, and I thought I’d share some of the details from the event. As usual, we planned out everything from the menu, to the DIY decorations, to the games that we would play. Nonetheless, we kept it simple and inexpensive. Luckily, we have connections with the Country Club of Harrisburg, so we got to use the venue and furnishings for free – good deal! And no, the slip-covered chairs are not necessarily my style, but the atmosphere in person was quite nice – light and airy with a sense of formality! But, to bring in a little fun, we decided to DIY some cute tissue paper pom pom flowers for the centerpieces in gender neutral colors (since they didn't want to know the gender of the baby)!

We placed the pom pom flowers atop some decorative paper chargers and nestled a few tea-lite candles around to add some ambiance.

Other than the centerpieces, we didn’t do too much in the way of decorations. The only other decoration was the sweet little DIY bunting flags hung on the fireplace.

We spelled out a cute little personal message for the parents-to-be.

We used decorative paper, cut out letters and yarn! It was super simple and super cute!

What’s a baby party without games? Boring, haha. So, we, of course, planned a few fun little games for the guests to enjoy! Here’s a peak at some of them.

We asked all the guests to Make a Prediction on the baby's gender and weight!

We played one of your pretty typical baby shower games - Guess the Gerber - where guests guess the unmarked baby food.

Here's another game, we had guests cut a length of yarn that they guesstimate would wrap perfectly around the parents-to-be, taking into account the baby bump, of course!

We dug up family baby photos and had guests Guess Who each photo was!

An even more important part of any party is the food, right? We decided on a theme of small, or baby-sized, sweets and eats with cute baby names, of course. So, here are just a few of the goodies we had!

Here are the mini baby sandwiches.. how cute are they?

Deviled eggs are always good party food, and we gave these the cute name of Bundles of Joy.

More snacks and more cutesy names - She's Ready to Pop-corn.

Mini baby muffins.. so cute, and they were so delicious!

We decorated sugar cookies as onesies, baby carriages and rocking horses, again in gender neutral colors!

Snagged these mini baby whoopie pies, otherwise known as Makin' Whoopie Pies, at the local Broad Street Market.

And, a party isn’t a party without the guests! So, here are few snapshots of guests enjoying their time.

Playing games!

Mingling!

In lieu of gifts, we asked each guest to provide an anecdote, story, memory, advice, etc. regarding parenting or siblings. Then, we compiled each sentiment into a scrapbook for the parents-to-be.

Here's a guest perusing the scrapbook.. and you can also see that, despite our request, lots of guests also brought gifts.
How sweet!

Here's a quick snapshot of the party!

And, here’s a pic of the glowing mom-to-be with her mom, Grammy.

You can barely see the baby belly in this photo. Who said horizontal stripes aren't slimming? =)

So, here's a cute little family maternity photo, showing the baby belly a bit more!

It seemed that everyone had a great time! Congrats again to the family of little Sophia! And, here’s the cute newborn photo I promised you.

Baby Sophia, doing what she does best.. sleeping!