I used my Cricut to cut the circle shapes
Originally, when I offered to do the shower I had a vision in my mind of all these beautiful floral centerpieces. Of course after we had our daughter and put a new engine in our truck I could no longer justify spending a bunch of money on flowers that would inevitably be thrown away or packed in a box. My solution was to figure a way to make my own flowers.
Enter: Coffee filter flowers. Here's how my first one turned out before I painted it.
Isn't it pretty. I was so excited. I used the templates from Martha Stewart but didn't actually read her instructions. Being impatient as I am I just started cutting and taping and they turned out great. So with my coffee filters that cost all of $1.79 for over 100 of them at Walmart. Here's a word to the wise, make sure you paint the petals before you go to the work of curling, taping, and positioning every petal. If you do like I did and paint them after you have them all put together and looking similar to perfection, the paint will ruin all your hard work and you will spend another 10 extra minutes reshaping every single petal.
I used paint I had in my stash. Cheap acrylic that I squirted some into a small bowl of water, mixed it together and started painting. I wish I would have gotten a great picture of the centerpieces before the event but I can't remember anything these days. I didn't think about a pic until I was standing taking pictures of my sister opening her gifts, so this picture is not fantastic and of course the centerpieces fell over in the car on the way to the site which bent some of the petals (frown). I used Frappuccino bottles wrapped in twine and a yellow polka dot ribbon tied around it. Each one had 3 pink coffee filter roses.
Here are the thank you tags I created in Picmonkey. I used the background of a pink heart in all the tags I used. All the food labels, signs for the Recipe card tree, card basket, and cookie buffet. I created it without really thinking and really really like it. It's so simple yet it worked!
These tags were stuck on clear treat bags I bought from Hobby Lobby. I used glue dots to attach them. Everyone took a bag and filled it with cookies of their choice as their favor and dessert.
The cookie buffet:
Can't for the life of me remember what the sign said but It's something I found by googling "cookie buffet signs".
Once again I forgot to take pictures until the whole shebang was pretty much done. I had 5 kinds of cookies for people to pick from, butter cookies, white chip chocolate, red velvet hearts, chocolate chip, and peanut butter.
One of my favorite decorations was the recipe card tree. I sent the recipe cards with the invitations with directions to fill it out and bring it to the shower. I took clothespins I had in my craft stash and used decorative pink striped tape I found at the dollar tree to cover one side of them. The sticks were found in my mom's yard and placed in a half gallon mason jar. I thought this was so cute and she got some really great recipes I plan on stealing haha.
This banner was not made by me but my sister's future mother-in-law had it from another shower she had done and asked if I wanted to use it. It was burlap and so cute I had to get a picture.
I also had tissue paper poms in dark/light pink and yellow. I made circle garland that didn't end up getting hung up because of time restraints and guests arriving early.
For food I chose chicken salad and ham salad sandwiches, pasta salad, deviled eggs, watermelon, strawberries, and cantaloupe. For drinks we had bottled water, homemade strawberry lemonade, and sweet tea.
My family is not big on games, in fact with every shower I've done (and there have been a few now) they complain at the mere mention of a game. That being said, I had to have something else for everyone to do other than eat and watch Kayli open gifts. So I chose the candy game where you match bridal phrases with a candy. The prize was boxed Sugar Daddy's, Sweetarts, Nerds, Twix mini candy bars, and a PayDay candy bar stacked and tied with pink ribbon.
Everything turned out so great and even though I didn't get to decorate fully like I usually do everyone enjoyed themselves and Kayli got lots of goodies to start her married life.