Baby Shower with my NJ Peeps

One of the things that my mom starting talking about as soon as she found out I was pregnant was a party to celebrate with family and friends in New Jersey. The prospect of that made me so happy as these are women that I have known my whole life. Millville is such a huge part of my life, my grandmother, my mother and I were all born there - we all went to Millville Senior High School. My mom's house previously belonged to my grandmother.

While I realize it is unusual to plan your own shower, I also wanted to make sure that my guests had a great time and I had tons of cute ideas. So I threw proper ettiquette out the door - and helped my mom to make what I thought was a great great event.

This first photo is my mom and me in our adorable matching outfits. I totally scored this dress on ebay and it arrived Thursday. The wreath on the front door was made by my uber talented Aunt Pat full of Daisy's and the sign says "Everything's coming up Daisy!"

This photo is of one of my favorite things - we had a "Candy Bar". I had seen some photo examples of these online. I started looking for pink and yellow candy as soon as I knew it was a girl. We even trekked up to Dylan's Candy Bar when we went to NYC to get some cute additions. There were merangues, pink mints, pink lipsticks, yellow and pink starburst (yes I personally sorted them), lemonheads, marchmellow ropes, pink and yellow peanut butter cups and a pink jelly bean assortment from Jolly Rancher. I had stickers on the bags that said "Thanks for making my day so sweet!" The lighting is a little off in the photo but the whole thing was just too cute!

Another personal touch that I thought would be cute was to have baby pictures of us and of the grandparents. The big pink scrapbooked one is me. To the right is Grandma Darlene. In the green frame is Daddy and Uncle TC. In front of the green frame is Poppop Ernie and to the left of me is Grammy Kim. It made a sweet presentation. Not shown but on the same table is a frame that I gave my mom when I told her I was pregnant. In it said - look for an updated photo on June 4th, 2009.

There were about 25 women who were able to join us including my best friend from age 3 Ali (from North Carolina) and her mom Paula (from Georgia) and they brought their new nephew Hunter (who has the most adorable blue eyes), who by the way used to live just two doors down. There were neighbors from the across the street, Bernadette and Jaquay, and next door Lynne and Meghan and the woman who introduced my parents, Mrs Cossaboon. My mom's longest and dearest friends, Sally and George from Goldey, and Phyllis who was her single girl friend and they still keep in touch and Dottie who my mom does to Fenwick with. My sister and niece were there - my oldest niece Alix - was off looking at colleges (which blows my mind because she was born when I was in college). My Aunt and two cousins, and then a second cousin from my grandfather side. And in the family tree that adds branches - and aunt and cousin Lacey from my dad's first wife's side of the family. I grew up with three sets of grandparents with an extra grandfather. The beauty was that everyone liked each other (most of the time) and everyone was welcome. And my grandfather's side that was divorced but his family never divorced us were cousins, Donna (who my mom watched her baby when I was in high school) and Brenda and Mary (who you may remember I have had the opportunity to reconnect with lately because she has come back to Millville and settled down a bit with the addition of her little guy Joel.) Mary did a lot of the photography shown here. It was so wonderful to see everyone.

And of course the gifts - it is so helpful to have such wonderful things to surround the baby with and to have the help when there are so many new things needed. I have registered at babies R us and at Target. A few people went to the practical side and picked up registry gifts, a few went more practical and got the sickness supplies that otherwise I would be running out in the middle of the night for. These gals also could not resist the adorable baby clothes and found dresses and day outfits. Kathy, Jill and Dawn went to the most exclusive baby shop in Millville and found a dress with a sash, a sweater and little white shoes for her. Just absolutely gorgeous. Aunt Pat got into the action and sent a few more outfits and some cutie cutie toys up from Florida. Donna and Brenda made an adorable gift basket with an elephant toy, an outfit and one of those towels with a little hood. Make no mistake this girl will be adorably dressed in pink for the first year of her life.

It was a wonderful day, I was so happy for everyone to share in this momentous occasion with me. It meant so much to me.