Bank Holiday Baby Shower

I spent part of the lovely sunny bank holiday weekend just gone celebrating the joint baby shower for two of my very good friends from primary school. It means a huge amount to me that we are all still in touch after all these years and I am so looking forward to meeting the two new junior additions to our clan.

I am planning to make each new arrival some little shoes when I know their genders and can pick out a nice fabric for them but in the meantime I thought some basic white babygrows, scratch mittens and blankets would be useful for their mums when they are newborns. I spent a while looking for nice gift bags to put the bits and pieces in and couldn't find anything I liked so instead, on a whim, I decided to make some from some leftover yellow striped wallpaper that I used for our wedding. Now I know how easy it is to make gift bags from scratch I shan't ever be buying one again!

I made these by wrapping the paper round a shallow carboard box as a guide. The next time I make some I will take some step by step photos and put a proper tutorial on here as it is so easy there is just no need to buy ready made bags which are always so overpriced for what they are. I finished the bags off with some buff luggage tags which I stamped with a pretty green swallow print. I tied all the individual babygrows and mittens etc with sheer yellow, green polka dot and green gingham ribbons and popped them inside. I hope it made some rather boring but useful Mothercare basics a lot more personal.

And as no baby shower is complete without cupcakes I made a batch to take along:

Hundreds and thousands take me right back to the parties that we all used to go to together when we were five years old. I love the fact that here we all are, two of us about to be mums and another a mum twice over already, still eating cupcakes topped with hundreds and thousands and enjoying each others company just as we always did.