Now, on to the party details. As I said before, Donna is waiting until the birth to find out the gender of the baby so we went for a neutral, but FUN, green, white and yellow theme. We made some bunting, hung cute onesies (which also doubles as a gift for the mom-to-be... oh sorry... mUm here in Australia) ordered balloons, bought fresh flowers and used lemons and limes in a lot of the decorations.

So cute, right?!?

Of course, we also had a lot of yummy food like these individual veggie cups with dip...


chicken salad sandwiches on both bread and croissants... (my momma's recipe of course!)

fresh fruit skewers...


popcorn and chips...

ham, cheese and tomato sandwiches...

and of course homemade cupcakes!

Okay, so maybe they were made from a box mix (thanks Betty Crocker) but they were still so YUMMY!

The day before the party, Alyce had done a maternity shoot with Donna and her husband Nathan. As a gift to Donna, Alyce went and had some of the pictures printed and we used it as the centre piece for the food table. Aren't her pictures fabulous!!


Of course, no baby shower is complete without a few games. We decided to play a few together and then have a few around the room that people could do as they mingled and visited with friends.
In the middle of the room we had a "wishing tree" where the guests were able to leave a wish, words of wisdom or advise for the new mum to be.

[the naked tree before the guests arrived]




We also had a guessing game where the guests were asked to guess how many nappies (diapers) were squashed inside a container. This was also another little gift for the new mum as she was able to take all of the diapers home with her after the party to use when the baby arrives. However, we ended up buying "boy" diapers by accident so we aren't exactly sure if she use them yet or not...

We played the traditional, "how big is Donna's belly game".

And there were two people who were very, VERY close!
The next game we played was definitely the biggest hit of the party! All of the guests were given a clipboard, pen and paper, asked to place it on their heads and given one minute to draw Donna's baby.
It was hilarious!
[Carolyn's baby picture]
[one of the better portrits]
We weren't really sure what Sarah drew becasue it certainly didn't look anything like a baby to us, haha!
After that we had a quick baby trivia game. Like, did you know babys aren't born with kneecaps?!?
Next Donna opened all of the gifts, which is always the best part in my opinion. I mean, who doesn't love little baby hats and cute cuddly toys?
And as a thank you for attending, we handed out these cute little "It's almost THYME" favours. Now I grew these little guys from seeds so they weren't exactly the best looking herbs ever seen, but I think everyone got the point.
Overall I think the shower was a huge success! Thanks to my amazing friends, it turned out exactly how I had imagined in my Pinterest-idea filled head :)
When I first came to Australia I worried about making new friends. As an adult, it isn't always easy to find girlfriends that you really feel like you can talk to and connect with. Although it was work that brought me to these girls, I have to say that they are not really my "work friends" anymore. They are much more than that! These girls are my closest friends and I am so very thankful that after three years of living here in Australia, I have found them. They support me, listen to my crazy stories, no longer hear my weird American accent when I talk and go along with my crazy ideas like it is no big thing.
Thank you so much to Alyce, Tynnielle, Sarah and Donna for being my rocks and making me feel at home here in Oz. Thank you for sharing in my excitement when life is great and being there to support me when I need it. Thank you for not running away when I volunteered you to help me with this baby shower and spending an entire day cutting up lemons and peeling carrots so that we could make my crazy ideas come to life.
I love you guys and can't wait to really celebrate when this little baby finally arrives!!!