Perpetual Social Chair

Prepare yourself...this is a long post!!

In college I was the social chair for my sorority. As you would most likely assume, that job entailed planning the date parties, social events, functions, etc. I may have graduated college 4.5 years ago (is that right?! Yikes!) but I still find myself the planner and organizer for a lot our sorority get togethers as well as showers, engagement parties, etc. Luckily, I love that kind of thing.

I think the reason that I enjoy event planning/coordination so much is that it combines all of my favorite things: friends, food, projects, cocktails, entertaining, themes, decor, usually Hobby Lobby and a wonderful celebration. I recently hosted a couples' baby shower for one of my best friends and her husband, and I'm kind of sad it's over! We had beautiful weather and a great group of friends and family to share the night with. Below you can see how it all came together...

The Planning Process

First things first, we needed a theme. Confession: I love themes. Back in college, my sorority sisters and I would often times dress up based on a theme. For some reason things are exponentially more fun when everyone is dressed alike.

Anyways, this being a couples' baby shower, we wanted something that the fellas would enjoy. I mean, let's be honest, have you ever heard a guy get excited about a baby shower? Yeah, me neither. But we wanted them to have as much fun as the girls, so we decided to make it a tailgate theme. How can a guy not like any kind of party if it involves tailgating? Well, since it was a baby shower and not a college football game, the theme was Pink vs. Blue. Janna and Evan didn't find out if  Baby Cogs was a boy or girl, so we decided that people could wear the color based on which "team they were on" or whether they thought the baby would be male or female. Then, we would  have games battling the pink team versus the blue team. First item, checked off the list.

I definitely can't take credit for the theme. As a matter of fact, if you search Etsy or Pinterest, you will see that the Pink vs. Blue theme is actually pretty popular! That provided me with a lot of ideas and inspiration as well as my invites. I purchased the invite on Etsy, and the vendor personalized the template and then sent a PDF and I printed as many as needed. Looking back, now that I use Publisher (I'll get to that later) I would probably make them myself if I did it all over again. Here are the finished invites:

The Section/Row/Seat was Janna's due date!

I've got to say, Pinterest is the best and worst thing to happen to party planning. It's great because it's full of ideas and DIY projects. However, it makes you feel like you should quit your job in order to actually be able to make each individualized, football chocolate covered strawberry and seven layer dip that is identical to Arrowhead stadium. I like to use it for ideas, but not as my party planning bible. However, it gave me a head start on my menu. I decided that being a tailgating party, our menu should include tailgating food (duh.)

Our menu consisted of:

• Peanuts
• Cheese, Carmel, and Kettle Popcorn
• Cocktail Meatballs
• Buffalo Chicken Dip
• Chicken Enchilada Dip
• Veggies
• Pulled Pork Sliders
• Baked Beans
• Pasta Salad
• Cupcakes

The next part is my favorite, the decor and projects. My plan typically starts very grandiose, then is slowly trimmed back when reality sets in. I ended up completing the following projects:

1) Pink and blue banner. I really like making pennant banners. I made one for my good friend, Katie's bridal shower, and one for my cousin's wife, Ashley's bridal shower. 

Partial photo of the banner from Ashley's shower (note to self, take pics of the things you make)

The inspiration for Janna and Evan's banner came from Giuliana & Bill's baby shower. They had a pink and blue reveal party, and these adorable napkins:

 I changed this to " j + e = 3"

You can see the banner above the snack table.

2) Pink & Blue letters. You can't miss these babies. My uncle started making 5' letters for my cousin's graduation a few years back. Now my dad and uncle are making them for birthdays, showers, anniversaries, and weddings...

My parents graciously allowed us to host the shower at their home, and as soon as my dad heard the theme, the letters were his first thought. My dad and uncle have made most all of the letters from other events they've done, so all we had to do was paint them pink and blue. We also had the people wearing pink take a picture with the "PINK" letters and blue with the "BLUE."

 3) PVC Goalpost. Tip: If you want a guy to help with shower/event preparations, ask him to build something sports-related. Again, this idea comes from Pinterest but it just took about $15 in PVC piping and a can of yellow spray paint. We put the gifts under the goalpost, then used it for a game later on (oh, I'll get to that.)

4) Wives' Tale List. Since all of the guests dressed in pink or blue depending on whether they thought Baby Cogs was a boy or girl, I thought it would be fun to see what the Wives' Tales predicted. Though they were split, the majority predicted girl!

5) Due Date Calendar. My cousin Mary did this at a baby shower for my cousin Katie, and I thought it was such a cute idea! We asked the guests to bring $1 for the baby due date pool. I created a calendar, and people signed their name on their guess for due date, and put their money in Baby Cogs' College Fund.

6) Football Wine Vases. I found this idea on Pinterest and it was probably the easiest project I completed. All that you need are empty wine bottles, a sink to soak the bottles, and a white paint pen. Being that my husband loves red wine, we had plenty of wine bottles to make this happen.

7) Baby Love. Again, saw this great idea on Etsy. You come up with a wish list for the baby, and have all of the guests fill it out. I loved this idea, but decided to make it myself instead of buy it. This is how I came to know my friend, Microsoft Publisher. It took me a few hours one evening to get acquainted, but I think they turned out really nice. The questions included: 

• I hope you learn ______
• I hope you aren't afraid ______
• I hope you love ______
• I hope you laugh _______
• I hope you never forget _______

At the end of the night Janna read through them and there notes are funny, touching and everything in between. I think it will be a great keepsake for Baby Cogs! (Again forgot to take a good photo, grrr)

8) Diaper Cake. This was my first attempt at a diaper cake, and it wasn't as easy as I thought. I bought a cake base, 80 diapers (size 1 and 2), a big bottle of baby powder, LOTS of rubber bands, purple and white ribbon, 3 K-State Onesies and a pair of K-State booties (do you see a trend here?) 

9) Diaper Wreath. I had diapers and ribbon left over, and happened to have a wreath base that I didn't use for my wedding. I went to Hobby Lobby and bought a letter "C" (for Baby Cogs). I looked up how to make a (mini) diaper wreath, and viola! 

10) Monthly Onesies. This was my favorite project and my gift to Janna, Evan and Baby Cogs. I definitely took a risk since I've never done anything like this before, but I think they turned out really cute. It's time consuming but, surprisingly, not too difficult! Here's what you need:

• 12 Onesies - This part was surprisingly difficult. You have to keep in mind that the baby will be growing so you need varying sizes. I also got some long-sleeved onesies for the colder months. 
• Inkjet Transfer Paper - Important Note: You don't need one page per onesie. I was actually able to print 4 transfers per page, so I could have gone with a smaller package. 
• A computer with design/publishing software (I also think there are some freebies out there on the web)
• An Iron

The first thing that you need to do is create your design. Janna and Evan are doing an elephant theme for their nursery since it's a neutral palette. I did an old fashioned Google Image search and found a blue and orange elephant. I then spent a while finding fonts that I liked until I finally came up with this design:

Next, you need to flip your designs, so that it's the mirror image. When you iron on the transfers, they will then show up the correct direction. Tip: Onesies are really, really small. You don't want a transfer that will overwhelm the baby. I made mine 3 1/2" circles. Once you create the design once, you can just copy the whole thing and change the number. I was able to fit four circles to a page. Oh, and make sure you allow enough space, I believe the transfer recommends 1/4" to 1/2". 

Now it's time to print. Make sure you use a high quality ink jet. Most times the properties will actually have a "T-Shirt Transfer" option. I ended up having to reprint one page because I got too close to the margin and it cut off part of the circle (I guess it's a good thing that I bought more transfers than I needed!) 

Next, you get the onesies ready. Iron each of them, but make sure the steam setting is off. Once they are all prepared and wrinkle-free, it's time to transfer. Make sure you match each month with the corresponding onesie. Then also take a minute to figure out where you want to place the transfer. Finally, place the transfer on the onesie, making sure it is facing the correct direction, and iron for the time suggested on the transfer instructions (I believe for the size of my transfer I ironed for 30 seconds.) Make sure you are constantly moving the iron and covering the entire transfer. Once you finish, set it aside as the transfer needs to cool down before you remove it. They get hot!! After the transfer is completely cooled, slowly pull off the backing.  There you have your personalized monthly onesies!

Now, for the games. Again, with guys in mind, we didn't want the games to be {too} cheesy. Tyler helped me with the game plan (no pun intended) we ended up with two fun, unique games.

1) Heads Up - If you haven't purchased this app (it's just $.99!) and played this game, I would highly recommend it. It's similar to catch phrase, but the themes are a little bit more exciting. The player puts the phone on his/her forehead and his/her team attempts to explain that particular word. The idea is to guess as many words as possible in one minute. Since the game is on your phone, the group explaining the words is recorded on the phone camera. After the round is over, you can watch the team trying to explain the words. It's pretty entertaining! Anyways, we decided to take this idea and use baby words. We gave both Janna and Evan two stacks of index cards each, with words for them to guess.

We allowed each of them to pick four people to be on their corresponding team. Evan was on the pink team, so he found four people wearing pink and Janna was on the blue team, so she did the same for blue. The game was two rounds. The first round, the team would try to explain the word on the card and Evan or Janna would have to guess what they were illustrating. Whichever team guessed the most correct in two minutes, would win the round.

The second round the team could not use any words. They had to act out each word on the index card. That was really funny! We used words like:

• Dirty Diaper
• Breast Feed
• Diaper Bag
• Teething
• Breast Pump (Watching the guys trying to act this out was priceless)
• Burpring
• Crawling

2) Baby Bottle Chug - Yes, this is exactly how it sounds. We bought 10 baby bottles and filled 9 with beer (see, a game that guys can get on board with!) and we filled Janna's baby bottle with water. Again, Janna and Evan each picked four individuals (pink or blue) to be on each team. The premise of the game is similar to flip cup (this child is destined to be a Wildcat.) The first person on the team has to drink his or her entire bottle and slam it down. Then, the next person can start, they follow suit until it gets to the last person on each team. We purposefully put Janna and Evan on the end, as the anchors. After they finished their bottle, they had to kick it through the goalpost.The first team to finish, would win the game. It was a close match, but the pink team pulled through!

All in all it was a great night celebrating Janna, Evan and Baby Cogs. Here is a picture of my beautiful Chi O sisters from the shower:

Baby Cogs is finally here! Guston "Gus" Evan Coglizer was born October 28th and he sure is a cutie. Looking back at the pictures, most people guessed right. It was a boy!