showering

well, i do that every day.  sometimes twice.

but in this case i'm talking, of course, about baby showers.  we celebrated two mommies-to-be over the last week or so, and we're all excited to meet their sweet little ones soon - both boys.  yay!

i was happy to be a part of the planning crew for amber's shower, for which lilcee graciously opened her home.  we were going to have right around a dozen people in attendance, and her living room was the perfect size for us to gather, eat, and chat.  because amber is a traditional kinda girl who's also a voracious reader, we chose the little golden books as our theme.  and because i'm me, you can guess as to what i contributed as our party favors.  right?

after "borrowing" bits and pieces from this awesome set of golden books printables, i took a full color printout of mini book covers to my favorite cake supply store to have it printed in edible ink.

i was pretty pleased with the quality of the printout - i've done this once before, but it was a really long time ago.  and this time, i was going to be cutting out the little covers and sticking them to cookies.  somehow, i thought the sheet would be super delicate - and it sort of is - but it was sturdy enough to withstand me pulling it off of the backing and using my pizza cutter to cut the shapes out.

the glaze i've been using on my cookies dries pretty quickly, so i had to work fast.

at lilcee's the next morning, we scrambled like mad to get everything in place.  we'd given ourselves two hours to prep, and with four pairs of hands to get it done, we were...golden.  haha, get it?  golden!  i kill me.

but seriously - look at how cute it all turned out!  do we know how to carry a theme through, or what?

amber's nursery colors are orange, aqua and lime - hence, the color-coordinated candy buffet and other stuff.

i think our guest of honor was pleased with how everything turned out.  she's a pro at throwing showers like this, so the partyzilla in me totally reared its ugly head. yeah. and look, we even had a blank little golden book to use as a guest/wish book:

lilcee's dogs were slightly less than impressed, though.

we managed to gather everyone for a quick group pic before the party came to an end.  i don't know how or why i ended up in the middle of the picture - that obviously should have been amber!

and then a week later, a bunch of us headed down to south orange county to celebrate the impending birth of our dear FGD's baby boy.  we spent most of our time gossiping, talking smack and eating - no time to waste taking pictures.  but we did manage to squeeze in a group picture here too.

and we found it utterly amusing to see that a bunch of us had busted out matching jackets for the evening.  just call us the denim brigade.

i love spending time with my friends.  i always end up with sore abs from laughing too much, but that's a good thing.  and it's wonderful to have such awesome reasons to gather and celebrate.  yay for babies!