Our Brown Nest

My visit to Delaware was a whirlwind. The kids and I drove up Thursday, shopped and party prepped with my mom on Friday, had 1 baby shower Saturday and the other Sunday. Both showers were so nice. Mom and I enjoyed putting it all together and blessing Christina & Trish and the new babies to come.

My plan for Christina's was to go for a more elegant/evening/cheese & dessert feel. So I gathered clear wine bottles of different sizes and used them as candle holders on the table. We had babies breath in vases throughout and pink roses to add some color. Christina's colors were pink/mint/gold. Mom and I made tassel's and bought a mint table cloth for under the lace for a pop of color on the table. We did a cheese and cracker platter, assortment of desserts, special cake as the centerpiece, crab melt-aways (crab meat on English muffins), fruit, and chicken salad with croissants for dinner. We also served decaf coffee and pink lemonade (to add more pink color). As for favors, my sister LOVES coffee, so we did "a baby is brewing" with bags of coffee beans to take home.

A chalkboard Christina made for her shower.
Adorable!! And we had the perfect amount of
tassel leftover to fit the chalkboard.

party favors

this cake has such a huge back story i won't get into here... let's just say
I'm glad it looks this pretty!! :)

cheese platter & fruit

me, Christina, & mom <3

My plan for Trish's shower was to do a vintage sports theme for her. Johnny loved baseball growing up and Trish loved basketball, so it was perfect. I did however feel strongly about not doing bright orange basketball colors, so we searched and searched for an "older" feel decoration for basketball and found the vintage basketball piggy bank that turned out to be a perfect centerpiece decoration. We explored a massive antique store here in Charlotte and had luck finding a tennis racket, baseball bats, golf club, blue pool balls, and an old ping pong paddle. My mom found my Bumpa's old baseball glove, baseball, whistles and cut out wooden baseball players. Oh and that framed vintage photo- my Bumpa was the coach! It was perfect.

For food I wanted to serve concession-like foods, so we did meatballs, smokies hot dogs, and cheese fondue with it's fixings: carrots, apples, bread. We also put out an assortment of desserts, a centerpiece cake, nuts, and the must-have classic Cracker Jack popcorn. We served sweet tea and lemonade for drinks and Johnny bought the ladies champagne to have mimosas.

For party favors we made a sign that said "I hope you had a ball" and put out bags of flower seeds to plant and grow. The paper with the flower seeds said, "plant these seeds and watch them bloom, just like baby Jilek who will be here soon".

my Bumpa on the left. <3

the party favors

Me, Trish, mom, & Chris

Trish and her mom

helping decorate the cake balls before the shower

also helping with Winnie who was very overwhelmed by all the people..

he ate cracker jacks popcorn all day long. haha

Darren's big buddy :)

this is precious because Winnie was afraid of Johnny
earlier that morning because "he's too tall"

Johnny and mom

The showers turned out perfect. I could not have done it without mom. She was the BEST!! Thank you mom for all of your hard work and for planning this with me. Those late nights of party prepping were so fun and totally worth it. And thank you to everyone who helped either watch my kids (dad & Johnny), help decorate day of, or helped by making something for the party. It is true that many hands make light work.

Christina and Trish- thanks for letting us do this for you! I am so happy you are both having babies very soon. We love you guys and can't wait for these 2 little ones to join our large crazy family. <3

As for the rest of our time in Delaware and some moments in between all the crazy, my kids were so good. It wasn't easy being "single mom" for the weekend, but they did such a good job and helped by not driving me too crazy ;). Here are some photos of them throughout the weekend.