Baby shower decorations

The shower decorations are coming along nicely. I went to Michael's last night for glue and ribbon, Walmart for sucker sticks to mount my cutouts, diapers ,and a baby receiving blanket (ended up finding a few basket stuffer items), and Dollar Tree for shred and floral foam.

Although I still have the banner to make and some small table decorations, I'm pretty close to being ready to just sit back and not worry about the next two weeks. I have purchased the plates and napkins, but no plastic table ware or cups to drink out of. Amy and Rex are helping with some of the expenses because it's kind of expensive to host a nice shower, or party of any kind, these days. I still have a cake (or cupcakes) to get ordered and some kind of punch to drink. Because of where we live, we can use the center's recreation room for free, which saves about $75 dollars.

I'm not sure exactly where these decorations will go, but the stork will for sure go on the gift table. The other two will probably go on the "food" tables.

The stork was cut with my Cricut New Arrival cartridge and then layered for strength. I ended up putting his neck on a sucker stick and sliding that down into the package. I made his bow and tied that on around his neck and the stick for added stability. The other bow is one that Michael's had on clearance for $1.99 (I couldn't have made it for that price). His receiving blanket package is filled with diapers.

This basket was supposed to be done to look like a bathtub, but it just wasn't the right shape and I couldn't find one that was. So, I decided to use it as a gift basket instead and put in things that add up in cost, but are things you might not think about needing. I made the bow and used diapers in the bottom as filler. Then, I put in some floral foam for my items that are standing up. They're glued to the sucker sticks and then those are stuck down into the foam. On top of that, I added shred to hide all the "hardware" needed to put it together. It's got two headbands (with bows), bedtime lotion, body wash, socks, alcohol-free hand sanitizer, nail clippers/files, stuffed hippo and giraffe. I picked those up because they are very close to the animals on her invitations and on her bedding. I just couldn't resist them.

This basket has all of my Cricut cut-outs in it. I used the New Arrival cartridge again. I used grocery bags as filler and then added my floral foam for the sucker sticks. The cut-outs are glued to them and then attached to the foam. On top of that, I added shred and some iridescent shred (I added that after this picture was taken). It's kind of hard to see everything, but there is a bathtub and duck behind the rattle, the circle in the middle is a cut-out of booties, then the right side has a bottle in front and two onesies behind it. The safety pins are attached to one of the diapers. The three "heads" are attached to soft rattles and I got them because they matched the other animals.

Amy loves them and was very impressed that I was able to find the animals. Actually I was, too.

Next up, the banner. I'm leaning toward using the baby bottle as my background and then adding Anna to it. Once they're made, then I'll attach the letters together with ribbon. That's the initial plan. It may change after I cut out a bottle or two. I'm thinking 4.5 inches wide by 9 inches tall. That will leave room for the letters to be 3 x 5 and still fit.