our gender reveal party

As I've mentioned, Sunday we had our gender reveal party.  We opted to have a party, because Chris was unable to attend the ultrasound with me, and I thought it would be a fun way to celebrate baby number two.  So at the ultrasound the tech had me look away, checked the goods, sealed the money shot in one envelope, and wrote the sex of the baby on a piece of paper and sealed it in a different envelope.  My friend Jenny picked up the second envelope from me and baked us a cake with all the answers on the inside.  So for everyone who was a little unsure, no, Christopher and I had no idea if the baby was a boy or a girl before the party.

My goal for the party was to make it cute and fun but keep it simple.  In the grand scheme of things this is a completely unnecessary party (well, I suppose every party is but that is beside the point :o) and since we couldn't schedule the ultrasound until about four weeks in advance, I knew I wouldn't have a ton of time to plan (except for I totally could have in anticipation of the date, but again, beside the point).  With my mom's help I think we succeeded quite well.  We kept the food pretty simple and the decorations to a minimum.  I opted to use aqua for the boy color so we could reuse stuff from Ryann's birthday party (namely the table cloths).  I knew I didn't want straight pink for the girl color, so I was considering yellow, then my mom suggested coral.  Perfect.  I found a couple of parties for decor inspiration (here and here) and we were off and running.  And this is what came of it...

On the menu was oriental smoked turkey pinwheels, Mexican style pinwheels, BLT pinwheels, veggies with tomato basil hummus from Trader Joe's and fresh vegetable dip, fruit with brown sugar dip, cheese and crackers and spinach & artichoke dip from Sam's with pita chips and Tostitos.  For dessert we had the lemon reveal cake, white chocolate dipped sugar cookies and peanut butter graham cracker balls (which were incredibly delicious, but apparently incredibly messy to make according to my mother).  We also had some citrus fruit punch, but ours never froze to the slushy stage.  Still pretty good though.

I ordered little mustache pins from etsy seller GreySkiesBlue (she is on a little vacay right now).  Katie was amazing to work with, very prompt in her responses.  I would have gotten the bows from her too, but she didn't have any coral felt and I was set on having coral bows.  TamTam to the rescue.  My mom made some bow pins out of coral fabric using this tutorial.  I believe she ended up putting a couple of stitches in the part that goes around the longer rectangle because they wouldn't stay glued down, but overall I think it was pretty easy.  Then again I had nothing to do with them :o).

The cake topper was made based off this tutorial.  Even though I didn't exactly follow the directions, I still thought it turned out pretty dang cute.  And it paired perfectly with the adorable cake Jenny made.  We thought about going through a bakery for a cake so no one would know, but after taste testing a couple cakes (Jenny's are way tastier) and them telling me they couldn't do exactly what I wanted (which really, wasn't all that complicated in my opinion), I said screw it and asked Jenny to do it.  If you're in the KC area and need a cake for a party I think she just might be starting to branch out into baking for more people, if you wanted to be connected with her let me know!

The paper pinwheel decorations where made roughly following this tutorial.  At first I apparently couldn't follow the directions correctly and was having a tough time, but Evie thankfully responded to my e-mail and set me straight and we were good to go.  They were fairly simple to make once I streamlined the process in my own manner, so I think I'll try to make my own tutorial in the next few weeks.  All of the pinwheels and poms were attached to the wall using command strips.  I haven't tried to take them down yet, so I have no idea if the pinwheels will stay intact, or if I've ruined the wall...

For the garland on the fireplace I simply made some tiny poms and punched circles out of cardstock.  Then hot glued the crap out of them.  There are two circle on each spot, glued with their backs to each other around the ribbon.  It was a quick and easy project, and I, um, started it at 5am the morning of the party.  I had been behind on time and not feeling so hot the couple days before so I didn't get anything made, but then the morning of the party I couldn't sleep so I figured why not.  It took me maybe two hours to put together?  Probably less.  It was fairly simple.  The most time consuming part was the little poms.

Here are some more shots from the party...

As you can see, the guesses for a boy definitely outweighed those for a girl (which was quite the opposite on the blog, with 60 out of 99 voting girl).  Overall I thought the party was great and a fun way to find out what we were having.  Honestly it was a little shocking when we cut the cake, because Christopher wanted a boy so badly, and I think I had willed the baby to being a boy in my head for him, so the bright coral cake was quite a surprise.

Thank you to all of our family and friends who came and made the day special, and a HUGE thank you to my mama for helping me with all this.  Everyone knows I couldn't throw a party without you.  Next on our to-do list (yes, after picking Halloween costumes mom)?  Designing another little girl nursery.  :o)  Can't wait!