Friday, June 29, 2007

Baby Shower Review

Beth's Baby Shower was every bit as exciting and wonderful as I anticipated and planned for! I will have to break the report down in to a few areas: The Food, The Decorations, The Guests, The Activities, and all other details. I took 75 photos last night and I hope even one captures the excitement of the night. See below for a few of the details:
The shower colors were my favorite combo of Pink and Green. I got these frames at the Dollar Store and used them as above and with another quote "Welcome Ava" (the baby's name) and then put photos of Beth as a baby and little girl in the others.
As anticipated, I had a huge crowd. Forty Eight**, to be exact. I kept arranging, re-arranging, and counting the chairs all day to make sure I had seating for the crowd heading my way that evening.
Initially,Ron had to stay outside as parking duty. We used as many driveways as possible and then every one else had to park in the road. I have very crabby neighbors directly across the street from me when it comes to my guests and parking. I have made it a point to invite them to our home, deliver goodies to them from each event and at holidays, but they are still very crabby and mean to anyone who even dares park in the street in front of their domain (those of you who have spent any time in South Florida need no explanation of this neighborly behavior). Oh well. The parking got off with out a hitch.
The code to my neighborhood entrance gate froze up and left several frustrated guests waiting longer than usual. Once we got the gate glitch smoothed over and the parking settled, everyone was in for a treat. It was such an enjoyable evening (I say that as the hostess who worked for days to pull this off)
With this huge crowd, came a pile of gifts that would rival any Christmas morning pile. Guess how long it took her to open all the gifts?????? One Hour and Twenty Minutes (1:20, yep) Amazing. I think the shower that Jan (Beth's mom) threw for me when I had Katherine was similar.
Eleven PM--that is the time my last guest left. When the last guest left, the most wonderful thing I can report is, I was not left with one ounce of clean up!!!!! So many people stayed to help move furniture back to original spots, wash dishes, wipe counters, sweep floors, take down decorations, load table cloths in the washer, load gifts in to TWO trucks, move my piano back out, stack borrowed chairs, bag up leftovers, etc. What wonderful friends I have. This was the greatest help they could have provided. Much more helpful that the actual shower planning and preparation.
After the huge event, I woke up to a relatively clean and orderly house. Amazing.
I will make separate posts for the food, decorations, activities, and photos of some of the guests.
**This number of 48 does not include Ron, Don (her dad who could not stay away-we allowed him to join the estrogen filled room around 8:45, he so cute as the father of 4 daughters) , and Ryan (her husband who sneaked in right after Don). Nor does it include the 10 children Ron ended up having to entertain with a movie upstairs.....No mess or problems with Ron on duty!!!!!!
Yep, it was a full house.

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