gender reveal party

The day my mom passed away, I had planned to have a little get together at my house to announce the sex of our little peanut. There was no doubt in my mind that the party should go on. She would have wanted it that way. I know it with 100% clarity. So that's what we did.

Two days prior, Ben and I had our anatomy ultrasound where we found out if baby Watson was a little boy or little girl. The very first person we shared the good news with was, my mom. We headed straight to her nursing home and excused everyone from her room so that she was the only one who could hear. I leaned in toward her and told her that I had a secret to tell her and then proceeded to tell her the good news. It was a special moment for me and one that I feel blessed to have experienced, especially since she passed away just two short days later.

I first heard about a Gender Reveal Party through a bloggie friend (her blog is private) who recently had one to announce that she and her hubby were having a little boy. I thought it was such a fun and cute idea and knew that I had to have one myself!

I originally picked out orange and green with some brown for the party colors and even made up the invitations to match that. Here's what I came up with:

 

I found the wording somewhere in blogland but for the life of me, I can't remember where. So whoever wrote it, thank you for such cute wording!

I had them printed up at Costco and within a day decided I didn't like the color combination. I also wasn't sure if I should mail them out since things with my mom were looking so poorly and I didn't know what was going to happen. So I just set them to the side.

Then a week or so later, I decided to go on with the party but then chose different colors and was so much more pleased with my choice. I went with pink, green and yellow. I thought it all went together so well! The night before the party, I was putting together this cute little circle garland when I asked Ben if he thought it was all too girly looking. He took one look and said yes. Well, being full of pregnancy hormones, I blamed him! ha! I snapped and asked him why he didn't tell me sooner and he was just sitting there like, "What the heck did I do?" haha! Poor hubby. I apologized and added more green to offset all the pink.

I decided not to go with games since it was going to be on a work night and not everyone would be able to stay too late. Instead, we all met at The Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner and then came back to our house for dessert and the big reveal!

We divided ourselves up in teams, those who thought baby was going to be a boy wore blue and those who thought baby was going to be a girl, wore pink.

Team Blue: 



Team Pink:



The dessert table was made up of little white bags of popcorn mixed with M&M's, large green gumballs, little pink sixlet candies, lemonade candy rock sticks, lemon bars, lemonade and finally vanilla cupcakes with the color reveal in the middle. I was excited to be able to use a lot of my platters and cake stands that I've been collecting over the past couple years too!

For the decorations, I made a banner in green and pink that read "boy or girl", a little paper circle garland that I made with hole punches, some homemade tissue paper flower pom poms and some store bought balloons. I was just really pleased with how it all turned out.



When I was researching different ways to present the big reveal, the one I liked best was the cake idea. With the cake, the inside is the color blue or pink depending on the sex of the baby. Another I found were cupcakes with the color placed on the inside and when everyone bites into them, the color is revealed and thus the gender. I thought that was the best idea and easiest for me so I went ahead and did that. I made regular vanilla cupcakes and placed the appropriate colored candy in the middle of each. I didn't have time to fuss with the icing so I just used a butter knife to put it on and then dipped each into a bowl of white icing sugar for a little sparkle.



This past summer I changed up our kitchen drinking glasses and purchased some regular mason jars. We have a local sandwich shop that uses mason jars as their glasses and I've always liked the idea so seeing that they weren't too pricey, I went ahead and made the switch. For the party, I set some out on the table and placed green striped straws in them and I thought they made a cute touch.



One of the things I did to bring a little more 'boy' into the theme was add 'boy?' or 'girl?' to the front of the popcorn bags. I bought the bags at the party store and used one of my scrapbook punches to punch a fun design on the tops of each bag. I first trimmed them down and then punched them. I really liked them!



When I was at the party store, I went down the bulk candy isle and picked out some pink, green and yellow candies to add to the table. I used my glass jars to display them and I added some pretty coordinating ribbon to them for an extra touch.



I had seen on one of the party websites these fun circle garlands and thought it would be fun to make one myself. The ones I've seen are made using a needle and thread but since I just simply didn't have the time to be that tedious, I just used scrap booking adhesive and regular old twine. I hung it from the ceiling with the flower tissue paper pom poms I had made and that was it!



I was able to get a picture of 'big brother' in front of the table before leaving for the restaurant wearing his vote!



We video taped the reveal so without wasting any time...the results are in...



IT'S A GIRL!!!!

We're just so excited to be completing our family with a girl! I had a feeling all along that it was a girl because I had read somewhere that women who have extreme morning sickness tend to be carrying girls. Not that I've had extreme morning sickness or anything but when I was pregnant with Evan I had no symptoms at all. Not one bought of nausea or anything but with this one, I've had it all. It hasn't been extreme but enough for me to notice and become suspicious! haha!

So it's a girl and I can finally get down to planning her nursery! Yay!