Niece's Baby Shower - the R E C A P

Thanks for hangin' with me on all this baby shower madness. I appreciate patient followers.

So with BOYS on the way, we had to come up with a shower theme idea that was rough & tough. So we went with a construction kind of theme. We saw some ideas on the interweb and it kinda just went from there... 

Dump trucks haul more than just dirt and rocks! They make great cracker haulers.

I made the signs with cardstock (remember I'm a scrapbooking fool) and my Cricut machine.

Hmm.. more of that clothesline stuff showin' up ;-) 

This picture shows my brother S E R V I N G some of my aunts and cousins. Nice!

Gift openin' time!

The shot on the top left corner - Sasha thinks she looks like a goat. teehee Those cute little itty bitty wooden babies came from Shannon, who's also with child. 

My sister-in-law Leslie made the fleece blanket. They were sooo cute - Conner's was covered with robots and Brady's was space stuff. Awesome!

The giraffes in the center of the collage - they came from Haiti and were hand carved.

Excitement happened when two car seats were unveiled!

Phil might have gotten a bit carried away and  hit his head on the mantle. Oops! 

A sweet lady we used to attend church with got really creative with some diapers, blankets & socks...

I kinda got a little carried away buying stuff for these boys, but who cares?! They needed every bit of that stuff and I finally did stop gettin' stuff.

But the gift I was the most excited about was the photo book of Sasha's maternity pics... her face in this pic makes my heart full!

If you're a photographer, you know how awesome it feels to see someone look at your work and love it this much!

The shower turned out nicely and everyone seemed to be genuinely happy for Sasha & Phil. We had a room full of people from all over the place but somehow managed to keep it between the lines. It really was great!

 My mom, me, my oldest brother (Sasha's dad) and Sasha, the beautiful momma to be. 

Next up: pics of those babiesssss. You're gonna LOVE em!!!!!

Niece's Baby Shower... PART II: A little DIY gift

Again with Pinterest... I'm not apologizing. It may be mostly a time waster but it does have perks!

Like this little project... 

I was inspired by this blogger (whom I found via Pinterest...swoon)
Blissfully Domestic 
Mine aren't as fancy, but I like how they turned out.

I bought my little wooden door hangers at Walmart in the craft area. My dad cut a notch in them and shortened them a bit (for looks, not entirely necessary). The notch lets you slip them off and on easily on your closet rod. (*Note: the blogger who inspired me chose to hang hers by ribbon)

I traced the shape of the hanger onto the back of a piece of scrapbook paper and cut out the paper.

Enter Mod Podge

Mod Podge has a million uses. This was only my third time to use it. A little goes a long way.

I just brushed a thin layer and then laid my scrapbook cutout on top and positioned it the way I wanted it.

You'll see my edges aren't perfect. But you get the idea.

Let them dry completely before adding your labels for clothing sizes.

And what do ya know, my Cricut came in handy again! 

I used it to cut all the numbers and letters. I used my "Don Juan" cartridge.  

I used a glue pen to glue each of the numbers and letters. 

And here's the final product!

Sorry I don't have a pic of them hanging in the twins' closet....if I can remember, I'll get a shot of that and post it here.

Niece's baby shower... PART I: The baby shower invitation

I'm still playing catch up with a few recent blogworthy things. Hang with me folks!

Who wants a store bought, cookie cutter baby shower invitation? No one! 
So of course me and my friend the Cricut machine had to do some work. 

This was so easy, but here's a HOW TO for you anyway...

Saw a few ideas out there thanks to a Google search and tweaked it to fit what I liked for our Sasha's little boy twins...

Of course the first step in the process was to print the wording on my printer and cut the papers to size. That kinda goes without saying. ;-) 

Moving on...

I couldn't find miniature clothespins so enter improvisation!

I cut tiny pieces of cardstock and then marked a tiny line across for the look of the wire piece that's on a real clothespin.

Cutting the tiny pieces of cardstock...now that was some real fun. 

Did I mention I made about 40 invitations? So 4 clothespins times 40 invitations... um yeah... that's a lot of tiny pieces of paper. And I haven't even gotten to the gluing part. 
Those store bought invites were starting to look pretty good... but.... I knew homemade would be more special and I had already committed to this here project so off we go!

I used the "Life's a Party" Cricut cartridge to make the onesies. 
Easy peasy!

I bought cheapy yarn at Big Lots for the clothes line. Keep it simple people - you're just going for the look of a clothes line. Doesn't have to be authentic. 

I placed the yarn and tucked it behind the cardstock with a tiny piece of tape on each side. A dot of glue held the yarn with the swag I wanted...

The 3D Zots made the onesies stand up just enough to add that extra little somethin-somethin I wanted. 

I use these a ton in my scrapbooking.

Gluing those tiny strips of cardstock was no small feat. But it can be done. I used a slender glue pen I got in Walmart over in the craft section. It has a fairly precise tip which made it a little easier. 

And there ya have it folks. 

A handmade extra special super cute baby shower invitation.... (ahem) made by yours truly.

Hopefully one day those twin boys will appreciate Aunt Lyndy's special touch. Probably not... but a girl can hope, right?