A Navy, White & Yellow Nautical Baby Shower

For the last 4 weeks my life has felt like a whirlwind, I have been planning the decor for my sister-in-law Tiffany's baby shower.  She's married to my brother and they are expecting their first baby, MY first nephew and I am so very excited.  I wanted the shower to be something special and memorable so I basically threw myself into it, literally.  It basically consumed me, lol.  I am so very happy with the way it turned out and so happy to show it off.  I scoured the internet for inspiration and put my own twist on some things.  Tiffany has his room with a nautical theme so I know I wanted that but I didn't want the traditional blue, red and white that you associate with the theme, I ended up going with navy, white and yellow and I have to admit I am very happy with the end results.

It started with the invites....I worked hard on these and they turned out better than I had hoped.

 I kept the yellow banner as a theme throughout, I bought the life preserver at Michael's as unfinished wood and then painted it added the blue ribbon and even decoupaged the letters for S.S. Nathan. All of the desert platters are glass plate glued to vases and painted to match the decor.  They cost literally about $2.50 each. I made the giant paper fans from posterboard, each paper fan is two posterboards.  The yellow "rose balls" are actually crepe paper roses on a styrofoam ball and attached to what was once a clear vase from Hobby Lobby but I painted them white to match. For the bunting, I could not find the perfect paper, anywhere so I actually designed the paper in photoshop and printed it myself, it was really simple and added that exact match that I was looking for.

The cake came from a wonderful woman located on the far east side of Houston, it was a drive for my mom but well worth it. It tasted amazing and she made it better than the original inspiration I showed her, the details were amazing.  You could actually see what looked like nails in the boat, the waves were perfect.



The pretzels were made by my 14 yr old daughter, she helped out so much and I am so appreciative to her for all her help in getting ready for this day.  I also had put my other kids to work at home, lol.  The jello cups turned out so cute, I actually saw this on Pinterest but they were made with oranges but as you can see orange did not fit my color scheme so I used lemons as the mini sailboat base.

This table served as an entry for the guests, it displayed the diaper cake I made (the very first one I ever made actually), the favors, the name tags and the guest book.  For the favors I took baby food jars and filled them with bath salt, painted the lids and added a custom label.  Inside there was a note rolled up (to resemble a message in a bottle) that said a cute little poem.  I had a little sign next to envelopes where the guest could pre-fill there address for the thank you notes to help the mom to be out.  For the guest book I saw where people were using their thumb prints to make trees and guests would sign around it.  I took it a little be farther and made a guest book with plain white pages and I asked the guests to stamp their thumbs and then write a little message or advide to the parents.

I love how the diaper cake turned out, I wanted it to be a decoration

 and it turned out better than I had expected.

I really thought these name tags were going to be the death of me, lol.  I made 32 of these things, they were not that difficult but a little time consuming.  I wanted them to resemble the paper fans

and be a little over the top, I think they were. 



Tiffany's stepmom was in chage of the food, I simply just wrapped the plastic ware and helped with the table decor.  I painted little wooden sailboats and a couple of lighthouse.  Over the table I used more bunting and on each end a cluster of paper lanterns to give it a finished look.  The table cloths that you see on both tables and island were painters drop cloths. Yes they were a little bit more than a normal table cloth for a party but they were thicker, longer, wider and gave a canvas look to help tie in with the nautical theme. 

We chose to stick with easy and quick games, but one thing I really wanted to try was to let the guest decorate a onezie or burp cloth for the mom-to-be.  It was a hit and a lot of fun to see what the guests came up with.  I supplied plenty of fabric, paints, fabric markers and templates.

And here is the guest of honor....my sister-in-law Tiffany....I am so ready for her to pop out my nephew!  I made her this ridiculously large name tag to where all day, as if any one couldn't tell she was the guest of honor with that gi-normous belly.

Thanks for looking and if any of you want to know how I did something or more details leave me some comments and I will try to answer you.