Black, White and Green Polka Dotty Cow Themed Baby Shower

A couple weekends ago, my aunt, cousin and I threw a baby shower for my other cousin.  She's due in July with a baby boy.  The inspiration behind the theme was the mom-to-be's love of cows.

I made the invitations with help from my Cricut.

I bought two packs of flat black cards and envelopes at Michaels, cut the cards down so I could add a polka dotty border, and added some green and black grosgrain ribbon (the green looks muted in the above pic but it was actually really bright).  I cut out the cow, the letters, and the white shape on the front of the envelope with my Cricut.  I printed out the deets using some cute fonts (The words were supposed to be black but apparently my printer was running out of ink so they printed gray.  Oh well.  I meant to do that.), attached a piece of ribbon with a brad and slid it in a slot I'd made in the black card (so it slid down between the polka dotty paper and the black card).  Cute, right?  I was pretty proud of them.

I wanted to do some outside decor so the guests could find my house easily and thought I could make a cow print garden flag out of felt.  So sad, but I didn't get any pictures of it hanging up with the balloons attached to the flag stake!

Abbie is addicted to felt.  When she started getting in the way of my work, I threw a scrap piece on the floor and that kept her busy for a while.

Ta da!  I used a piece of poster board as the backing, hot glued two pieces of white felt to it, then cut random cow spot looking shapes out of black felt and hot glued them as well.  I attached pieces of the same green ribbon I used on the invites to the top for the flag to hang from, cut out a big N (for Noah, the baby's name) with my Cricut, and voila!  Easy cow print garden flag.

I think my front doors look empty without wreaths, and I really wanted to make some for the shower.  I found these awesome wreath forms at AC Moore for $5 each!  I thought that was an awesome price for something that can be changed time and time again.  I just weaved some ribbon through so they matched the shower colors.  Now I have cool wreaths that I can change up as often as my heart desires!

A few weeks before the shower, I started collecting mason jars to use as drinking glasses.  I bought the white melamine tray at Target for $12.99, and got the tags, baker's twine, and paper straws on Etsy.  The hard part was finding places to stash the jars when the shower was over.  Thankfully I was able to squeeze them in the cabinet above the microwave.

I rounded up all my white decor items and came up with this mantlescape.  Actually, I really like this look for summer, so I'm leaving it!  I replaced the photos in the frames with the same scrapbook paper I used for the invites and wrote "Welcome Baby" in the center two. (I'm thinking about not putting photos back in these frames and just framing some cute scrapbook paper instead.  I really liked the way this turned out.)

Welcome baby Noah Glenn!

Of course a party's not a party without some tissue paper pom poms.  This was my first time making them and it was so super easy!  I pawned them off on the mom-to-be when she left the party because seriously, where do you store these huge things?  And I would feel bad throwing them away.  I guess you could take them apart and use the tissue paper, but after all that folding and cutting, it just seems like a waste!

Can you spot the cow print piggy bank in the above photo?  My friend Crystal and I were at Dollar Tree and she found this cute plain ceramic pig and said "Hey, you could paint cow spots on him!" and I was like "Um, but he's a pig."  Needless to say, she convinced me and for only $1 and ten minutes of my time, I think it's the cutest thing ever!

We had the cake made and it was by far the most expensive thing at the shower.  It turned out so cute though!  But it was huge.  We saved the top tier for the baby to eat on his first birthday.

And, finally, here's the Mom-to-Be!  Congratulations Tess!  We can't wait to meet baby Noah.

Linking to these parties.