Will and I were talking the other night about how great my pregnancy has been so far. I feel so blessed to have had such an easy pregnancy with no (throwing up) morning sickness and no complications. We can only pray that everything continues to go smoothly throughout this last trimester! I can't believe how fast it's going.
I'm telling you right now that this post is long. There's just so much from this party that I loved. It was such a great day and I've been reliving it since then!
desserts || decorations || mason jar cups || tulle poms that Amanda helped me make
Baby Kassner banner that I made || choose your necklace! || chalk for voting board || close-up of delicious rosette cake made by Bad Ash Bakery
pink & blue punch || shrimp cocktail || mason jar centerpiece in kitchen || food!
Getting in some practice with Harrison!
The beginning votes
And here's where I need to explain what's going on...
First things first: My amazing friend Kelly Ginn (yes, the same one I always rant over because of her lovely photography) was so helpful in planning the gender reveal surprise. I ordered a 3-ft. black balloon from itzwhimzeycal on Etsy, cut up a trillion pieces of pink/blue confetti and added colored sequins to two separate bags (with the help of Amanda again). Last Thursday after our appointment, we took the balloon, 2 bags of confetti and THE envelope over to Kelly's. She would be the FIRST person to know Baby K's gender until we popped the balloon on Saturday. Being a photographer, she had to document what was inside the envelope and I'm SO glad she did! Here's her photo...
I wrote the first part and the sonographer filled in the important part!
Also from Kelly
We LOVE the picture of Baby K waving! My brother noticed that it's exactly how Will waves and IT IS! Too funny!
Another dilemma I was having was how to do the name reveal. I had been telling our families from the very beginning that we would tell the Baby's name once we knew what we were having. And honestly, last week I was regretting saying that! We had been set on a girl name basically since we got married. The boy name was the one giving us some issues. We LOVE the name Crew, but just hadn't decided if we were going to include William in the name or go with something different. We made our decision on Friday...just in time! Kelly had offered to write the name on this super cute chalkboard that she had and we could reveal it like that. It was perfect. If you know Kelly, you know she has adorable handwriting so I trusted whatever she did! I gave her our girl name and boy name and she planned accordingly. So THAT'S how the surprise worked. A lot of people at the party assumed we knew beforehand because of the name reveal, but we didn't. 100% surprised thanks to Kelly!
The chalkboard - all covered and ready to go!
I got these pictures from Kelly after she went and got the helium in the balloon on Friday. Don't pop, don't pop, don't pop!
Now, my mom had been saying for weeks that she was terrified that the balloon would pop before the party and the surprised would be ruined. I agreed with her, but didn't actually think it would happen. When Kelly delivered the balloon to my parents house on Friday, they put it upstairs in a closed room by itself. Just. in. case. We kept it up in the room until it was TIME on Saturday. Everyone (60+ people) gathered in the kitchen/sunroom and we waited on my dad and brother to go get the balloon from upstairs. It was pretty loud in there until we hear this loud POP coming from the front of the house. Instant silence. And cue these faces...
(p.s.-thanks Sarah for capturing this moment!)
No one could see where my dad and Cody were so we didn't know what had happened. A million things were going through my mind. Mostly, I was trying to decide if I should make a mad dash to the front of the house to see what color confetti had just popped out of the giant balloon. But...I stood there frozen. All of the sudden I hear people start saying, "Courtney, your dad wants you." And then I see Dad making his way to where we are standing and I walk to meet him. His has something light blue in his hand and that's when I lost it. I couldn't stop crying. I just kept thinking, "At least we can still reveal the baby's name." At first I thought he was handing me blue confetti that had just come out of the balloon, but it was actually a light blue tack to pop the REAL balloon with! Real funny, Dad! It actually is pretty funny now. When it happened, not so much.
From what I understand, here's how the conversation went between Cody and my dad:
Cody's walking down the stairs with the real balloon.
Dad's standing at the bottom of the steps with a blown up Ziploc bag.
Cody: You know she's going to cry, right?
Dad: I don't know if it will even be loud enough.
Cody: Well make sure you hit it hard.
So I had to control my crying before we could do the real thing.
Still teary-eyed!!
IT'S A BOY!!
If you watch the video you'll see that I didn't actually get to pop the balloon. Will's excitement took over and he popped it right before "1." My arm just jabbed into air..and confetti!
And more tears...from Will too! I don't know if I even screamed or anything. There were just instant tears. Probably because I had to push PAUSE on the tears two seconds before!
So happy for a baby boy! We had been saying all along that it was a boy. (Except for about a week or two at the beginning I thought girl) I don't know why, but after our past two ultrasounds and seeing him move around so much we just knew it was a boy. This probably isn't a good thing, but we had been calling the baby Remi, Jr. (after our dog) because they seem so alike! Ha! Both so full of energy!!
I'm not too sure why Will has his tongue out here? Catching snowflakes?
We love our ICC family!
So thankful for all of Amanda's help for this party!
My dad giving me a hard time about his hilarious joke. And yes, I typed that with sarcasm.
Still talking about "the joke."
I love my baby brothers! And I know they're excited about another hunting buddy!
We feel so incredibly blessed after this party. Over 60 of our closest friends and family came to celebrate Crew with us. He is already loved by so many and we are so thankful for that! I'm so excited to start planning for this sweet boy!
This past Sunday I helped host a Sip & See for one of my best friends and her sweet baby boy. I volunteered for the task of decorations and I was excited about doing some crafting for this get-together! It was a great turnout and the other 4 hostesses did so great with the delicious food, invitations, and picking out a hostess gift for Brooke.
I found the link to make these on none other than Pinterest! On the website they suggest making ornaments out of these, but I thought they would look great hanging above the food table. You can find the tutorial and template here. [Warning: these are very time consuming...and a little frustrating when assembling, but the end result is great!]
This yummy cake was made by Off The Square Catering
This was so easy to make and I think it turned out great. I just cut out the triangles with scrapbook paper, threaded some string through, painted the letters and voila!
Izzy was enjoying all the attention on Sunday
The color scheme for the Sip & See was blue and brown. We pretty much went off of the cute blue and brown giraffe invitations. I wanted Brooke to be able to keep this for Bennett once we were finished with it and since his room is more of primary colors I made this a reversible banner! I loved the way it turned out!
The back of the blue and brown side
I made some pinwheels and attached them to dowels that I had painted and cut to size and then put them in mason jars. Have I mentioned that I LOVE mason jars?!
The blue stuff is 'Unity Sand' that I found in the wedding section at Michael's! It was inexpensive and served my purpose great!
I've seen door hangers like this at all kinds of craft fairs. I've seen them mostly made of burlap, but I've also seen them made of some type of screen. That's what this is made of: window screen. There wasn't any type of tutorial for this...I just kind of knew what I wanted and went with it. I love the way it turned out and I've even received some orders on door hangers already! Let me know if you're interested in one for your front door or even to hang on your child's bedroom door!
I was trying to figure out what to do for a table runner. One of the other hostesses said she had some white table cloths so I decided to go buy some fabric and just sew one. I found the fabric at Premier Fabrics in Germantown, TN. (I could stay in that store for hours redecorating my house! They have the BEST fabrics!)
You may notice the giraffes hanging in the background. (I don't think I took a picture of them alone.) I wanted a backdrop for the food table and this is what I came up with. So a few weeks before the Sip & See I started cutting out giraffes. I had a PDF of the invitation with giraffes on it so I was able to take those from that file and enlarge them to cut out so they were the exact giraffe. I cut out two different sizes in varying shades of blue and brown. Then I strung them using some of Will's clear fishing line. I attached them to a square dowel that I painted blue and used to hang across the two windows.
These giraffes caused some stress in my life. This photo was taken after I had hung the giraffes up at my house so they wouldn't get tangled... That obviously didn't work. As soon as I walked away it fell down. I just had to take some deep breaths over and over so I didn't scream! Ginger looks sort of like I did when I saw them falling.
You can see the giraffes good again in this photo.
All of the food was so good!
This is baby Bennett and his Mommy! What a good photo!
Bennett was so tired after a long afternoon! Isn't he cute?!
Speaking of cute, I just had to add a couple photos of Bennett and big sister, Celia! They were too cute not to post. You can really see Celia's personality in these pictures! I have no doubt that she is going to meet and exceed any expectations of her as a big sister. She is so great and I can't wait to see her grow up with Bennett. Being a big sister to a brother is something special and I'm so glad she gets to experience it!
Aren't these two babies great!? I think this photo of Celia is my absolute favorite!
