First comes love, then comes marriage...

Then comes the baby in the baby carriage!!!! Hooray!!! My little sister is having a baby!! This day did not come without a lot of heartache and tears, and my sister deserved a baby shower to honor what a wonderful mom she is going to be to my nephew... Did I mention it was a boy!?! (Yay, boys!!)

She signed off on a "nest theme", so I ordered these beautiful mid-century nest invitations on Minted.com. I drew a similar nest in Illustrator, created an event logo and then used it on a lot of the shower printables.

I found these unpainted wooden bird houses at Jo-Ann Fabric. They were really affordable and helped carry on our nest/hatch theme.

I painted and mod podged each one with a variety of colors and scrap-booking papers... and even some pretty washi tape.

I even hand-cut little scalloped roof shingles (phew!) for one before deciding that the rest of them would—obviously—need to be painted instead.

They were a great way to add a special touch (and color) to the restaurant without overwhelming the tables. And the best part... everyone could take them home afterwards!

I assembled these floral centerpieces with round galvanized buckets from Michael's, a grapevine wreath and some plants. I used a white begonia and some greenery that I was confident I could keep alive in the week leading up to the shower! I also cut out some birds from my scrapbook paper and glued them to bamboo skewers so I could place them in the dirt.

We opted to bring our own menus to tie in the overall nest look and feel.

I cut out a bunch of different shaped birds from the same scrapbook paper I used for the bird houses for people to write down advice and general well wishes. My original plan was to build some sort of frame to clip these little chirps of advice to, but I stumbled up this perfect green wire organizer at Michael's. It was green and had birds on it... some times the planets just align!!

I put together (ok, maybe I am still putting it together) a little scrap book to hold all of the birds and baby prediction cards that everyone filled out.

Mom is remaining mum on the baby's name, so I thought it would be fun to have our guests fill out these baby prediction cards with the name, birth date/time, weight, height, etc.

I wanted to avoid traditional baby shower games, but couldn't resist this hysterical face swap "game". I took a photo of the mom and dad, had them laminated and then cut them into strips so the guests could build what they thought the baby would look like. And...Now I can't sleep at night. So funny... and so creepy!! It also looks like my sister could be birthing Ralph Macchio. I'll keep you posted!

The nest theme was carried onto this cute little table top sign for the gift table.

My mom and I made these nest/cookie favors. The nests were made with chow mein noodles, marshmallows and chocolate (Thanks, Mom!!) We formed them over little glass bowls and let them cool. Then we made Ethel's Sugar Cookies (from the good old Betty Crocker Cookie Book!) with our sea foamy green color icing. To get the robins' egg speckled effect, I put some brown food coloring, water and a small amount of confectioners sugar in my olive oil spritzer and sprayed those babies!

We wrapped them up in cellophane bags, tied with green & white butcher twine and this sweet little tag.

Thank you to everyone that came and made Katie's shower so special!! And thank you to The Huntley Tavern in Summit, NJ. Their food is creative and delicious, and the staff and service were really impressive.