Baby Girl Shower Menu featuring Strawberry Truffles, Edible Butterflies and Pearls

If you haven't been following along this past week with my other baby shower posts, you might want to check them out as well...

Princess Baby Shower PreView

Baby Girl Shower DIY Topiary Tutorial

Baby Girl Shower Table Decor

Baby Girl Shower Invitations and Branch Centerpiece DIY Tutorial

While looking around etsy for shower ideas, I found a few more absolutely ah-maz-ing etsy artisans.

These Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Truffles were special ordered from amays3402 etsy shop, and were placed on a tall white metal filigree stand purchased from HL.

The cupcakes were ordered from our local bakery,  and I decided on pink icing.  Then I found etsy shop sweetdejavu who makes Edible Butterflies
and Edible White Sugar Pearls
pearls. (the butterflies come in different colors, styles and sizes...and the pearls come if different colors) The following 2 photos are from the item listings, not from the baby shower.

Here is how we used them....

And though we served cupcakes for everyone, I decided to have a very small cake made for the "mommy-to-be"....I added a few of the edible butterflies to the center of the top, and pearls were placed randomly all over (I'm really regretting that we did not get a close-up pic of it, it was gorgeous).  I also scattered a few of the butterfly cut-outs that my sister made with her Cri-cut and scrapbook paper, around the edges of the plate. 

We displayed it on "mommy-to-be's" table in a vintage etched-glass cake plate that was my grandmother's.

The Menu included:
Bite-size buns, also from the local bakery filled with Pimento Cheese Spread, Smooth Chicken Salad and Chunky Chicken Salad
Vegetable Pizza
Macaroni Salad
Fruit Salad

We served a Strawberry Punch and Raspberry Ice Crystal Lite.

We found small 1" plastic babies at HL and froze each one in an ice cube, added an ice cube to each guests punch glass and whoever's baby was "born" (melted out of the ice cube) first won a prize!

We also placed glass candy dishes on each table filled with assorted nuts and handmade ButterMint Baby Booties...

If you are looking for any kind of party planning ideas...go to Etsy's website and type any word you are searching in the search bar (ie. baby, boy, girl, wedding, anniversary) and you will find so many ideas from all the etsy artisans you'll have your event planned in no time at all!!!

Linking up to these blog parties....go check out all the great ideas in blogland...

Baby Girl Shower Invitations and Branch Centerpiece DIY Tutorial

front of invitation

I made the baby shower invitations using the online website Mixbook where you can upload your own photos and edit them, upload your own scrapbook papers and elements to design your own cards, photo books, and calendars.  You can also invite other family members to help out with the albums.   I have made photo albums to give as gifts and am currently working on getting all our family photos put into albums.

In keeping with the "Princess" theme, I titled the front of the invitation "Preparing for a Princess" and I added pics of Miranda, her belly, and an ultrasound.  The back of the invitation had all the details for the shower itself.

I have enjoyed scrapbooking in the past but have found that I prefer the unlimited artistic options by going digital.  Every single background, element and every text was put into place and edited by me.   If you've never tried it but would like to, let me warn you, it can become very addicting...

back of invitation

I've also recently found the online photo editing site Picnik and have just started playing around with it, and so far I'm in "LLLLOVVVVEEEE" with it.  I used it on the back of the invitation to "pixelate" Miranda's last name and the RSVP phone number, I'm not that great at it, but I'll only get better with practice :)

Now for the Branch Centerpiece DIY Tutorial:

The food table featuring the branch centerpiece (I wish we would have taken the pic after we cleaned off the bar in the background)

I started with dead, bare branches that had fallen in our yard out of the large maple tree that drops them every time a wind storm blows through.  I picked the ones that were the most appealing to me.  I then purchased from Michael's a couple of containers of small fabric flowers, Martha Stewart Glittering Glue & Lustre Glass MicroBeads in White Gold.

I proceeded to add the glittering glue to the center of some of the flowers, then sprinkled the microbeads onto it, shaking off the excess...

Some of the smaller flowers, I layered with hot glue.  I also found the tall pink tin can at Michael's and stuffed it with wadded up newspaper to provide support for the branches.  I arranged the branches into the newspaper then used my hot glue gun to attach the flowers randomly.

To finish it off, I added a white feather boa that was purchases at Hobby Lobby to the top of the tin pot.  We plan to place this in the nursery for decoration but I think I'm going to have to cut the size down quite a bit.   To get this to the shower, I had to remove the branches from the tin, and lay them flat in the back of my SUV (the branches were so big, I had to lay the back seats down for them to fit), then I just rearranged it back together at the shower.  It was honestly so easy to do.

I used very little of the glue and microbeads, so I'll have them for another project, so this really only cost me the price of the tin pot, the feather boa and the flowers, probably around $22.

Nate Berkus always says to use things from nature and I think this fits that bill nicely, if the branches get broken, they are very easy to replace, and cost nothing because you can reuse the flowers.

If you missed the other posts about the baby shower, go check them out...

http://mybluepeacock.blogspot.com/2011/06/baby-girl-shower-table-decor.html

http://mybluepeacock.blogspot.com/2011/06/baby-girl-shower-topiary-diy-tutorial.html

http://mybluepeacock.blogspot.com/2011/06/princess-baby-shower-preview.html

Keep watch this week for an awesome interview and giveaway from an amazing etsy artisan!!!  I'll also be sharing the menu, some purchases from other amazing etsy artisans, and a few handmade gifts.

Baby Girl Shower Topiary DIY Tutorial

I had planned to upload the baby shower invitation and share with you the online site where I made them, but alas, my puter woes continue....for some reason my wireless printer/scanner/fax is no longer communicating with my router....hubby will have to add this problem to his "honey-do" list.

So instead, today I'm sharing the topiary tutorial.  First I went to our local pottery shop, Zanesville Pottery and China in Zanesville, Ohio and purchased the 6x6 concrete pot.  The next stop was Hobby Lobby (love that store) and purchased more glue sticks, floral foam, a bag of moss,  a 6" foam ball and curly willow branches (I used 4).

I love how the pot as an aged, antique look to it, and I needed something that was heavy to support the height I wanted so this one worked really well. 

The flowers are white peonies, I used the full blooms, the buds and a few leaves.  I already had them from Michael's.

I removed the moss from it's bag and filled my sink with warm water, pushed all the moss down into the water until the bubbles quit coming to the surface and let it soak for about an hour (this really rehydrates the moss and plumps it back up to normal).  Then I drained the water and let the moss drain for another hour in the sink before laying it all out on dishtowels to dry overnight.

Hubby made a hole in the 6" foam ball and I hot glued the curly branches into it, then cut the floral foam to fit into the pot, making a hole in it as well for the bottom of the curly branches (this is the one thing I should have done better, it needed more stability).

I then pulled all the blooms, buds and leaves off their stems and proceeded to hot glue them to the 6" foam ball.  When that was finished and the moss completely dry, I pulled to moss sections apart to fit around the top of the floral foam at the base of the curly branches.

My plan was to place the topiary on the gift table, then my daughter could take it home with her to be part of the nursery decor.  When she saw it, she loved it but wanted a bit of pink added to it.  So I glued some pink geranium blooms in a few places, then we decided to add a couple of blooms to the moss to look as though they had "fallen" from the top. 

We were all very pleased with how it turned out, but getting it to the shower was a challenge, I did not have it stable enough in the base and we had to do some repair work at the shower.

The baby shower was held in the basement of our church and since there was no air-conditioning (and it was HOT), we had to use a couple of fans which really helped , but as you can see in the following photo, our poor topiary that had been through quite an ordeal getting to the shower, was starting to lean.

We also used a few large white ostrich feathers (also purchased at HL when they were 50% off as they were expensive) placed them in pretty glasses on different tables, and the fans of course made them lean as well.