spring-themed baby shower

Between working on my evil, evil thesis and planning a baby shower for my friend k, I haven't had much time for crafting! Now that the shower is over and since I have already claimed cooking as my creative practice in an earlier post, I figured I'd report in on the crafts and food.

From the very beginning, I pictured a spring theme--with birds and tulips and greens, yellows and whites for colors. It ended up just as I had pictured it.

I had wanted to make stuffed birds as favors using this perfect (and super easy) pattern. In the end, a friend's very crafty mom came through and made ALL of the birds! They were beautiful...

My dad even made a cute display tree for them.

Whenever I have people over, I try to come up with a menu that can be prepped/made ahead of time so I can hang out with guests without having to be dealing with food. I also secretly am not very good at having help in the kitchen, so it's good for me if everything can be done before people arrive!

I went with a chilled pea & buttermilk soup, beef tenderloin with arugula salad, raspberry chicken with baby spinach salad, snap pea and avocado pasta, and a white bean salad (courtesy of pictures & pancakes). H's mom brought a couscous salad with chicken, dried cranberries, pine nuts, chickpeas and other yummy things. Everything was either cooked or cut up and prepped on Saturday, so it all just had to be put together on Sunday before the shower. Besides for making enough food to feed at least 4 times the number of guests we actually had, everything went smoothly! K's mom brought the fixings for delicious bellinis...I had no idea I even liked bellinis!
At the first meeting of the knitting line last week, Stephanie mentioned Baby Shower Bingo. As soon as she mentioned it, I knew I had to have it--I always think the present-opening part is so awkward, and this would give people something to do. I then spent more hours than I care to admit creating the cards...but it was all well worth it--people got very competitive and into it!
I had fun planning and hosting the shower and really enjoyed honoring the mom and baby-to-be!