some ideas on how to throw a baby shower

a while ago, when two good friends of mine were pregnant, i threw them a babyshower. this is how i did it.

since it was a surprise party for the two pregnant ladies, the whole thing was quite relaxed, so no registering for expensive gifts or anything. everyone invited to the party simply brought a small gift along with them. the whole thing wasn't supposed to be tacky, but we had some tacky things just to have a laugh.

first of all, above is a picture of the invitation i sent. (i tried my best to make it look like my friends, but i am not a great cartoonist!)

the catering was quite easy, just tea and cakes. below is a picture of the pram-shaped cake i made. once you know a good sponge/biscuit recipe, it really is quite easy to make any kind of cake by simply cutting the sponge into shape. for chocolate flavoured cream, i simply melt a bar of chocolate (plus a little bit of sugar/vanilla extract) in a pot of whipping cream, chill it, and then whip it a few hours later. for raspberry/strawberry cream, blend the fruit along with some sugar/vanilla extract and then fold that into the whipped cream. so as you can see, the body of the pram was strawberry, the handle and roof chocolate flavoured, and the wheels kiwi.



while we were eating the cakes and having tea, the pregnant ladies could open the presents that the guests had brought. for entertainment after tea, i had organised a game/quiz. the guests divided up in teams of two people, and everyone got a little game-booklet (see below).

the baby-shower-game had several stations, all distributed throughout the house:
station 1 - guess how many jellybeans and chickpeas were filled into a baby bottle
station 2 - play "the price is right", i.e. guess the price of some baby items
station 3 - take a quiz with funny questions about baby-related things
station 4 - guess famous pregnant celebrities (see picture)
station 5 - guess grown-ups belonging to a series of cute baby pictures
each team would start at a different station, so that there would be no queues. when everyone was done, we re-convened in the living room to compare the results. as a prize, i had bought two gossip magazines. even though these prizes were meant as a joke, there was quite some discussion about the fair distribution of points to determine the winners!


all in all, this baby shower was great fun and i think the guests and my pregnant friends liked it. i definitely enjoyed planning it and hosting it, so i can only recommend it if you have any pregnant friends!!!!

Christianes Babyshower Quiz

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Solution To Christianes Babyshower Quiz

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top 10 self-made xmas presents

i thought it would be fun to have regular top 10's on my blog.
here is the first one, just right for this season:

::::::::MY TOP10 OF SELF-MADE CHRISTMAS PRESENTS:::::::

1. Make your own christmas tree ornament.
Very easy and fun! Get a plain Xmas tree ball from your favourite artsy-craftsy-shop (like this one here) and paint it using any type of paint you like. I just recently painted one with acrylic paint and then put a layer of glossy varnish over it. In order to paint it without making a mess, rest the ball onto a glass, paint the top side and dry it with a hair dryer, then turn it around. A picture of the final product is above.

2. Make your own painted crockery.
Sounds hard but it's not. There are shops (like this one in the UK) where they have unpainted crockery templates (bowls, mugs, plates, jewelery boxes, little figurines.. anything), as well as all the enamel paints you need. You just paint them there, they burn the crockery for you. Very nice!

3. Make your own christmas stocking.
Use all kinds of old material you have lying around, sew it together, done! A picture of two stockings I made is below.

4. Make your own lavender pillow.
My friend made the one on picture three, it's so nice! it now hangs in my wardrobe and makes my clothes smell nice.

5. Make your own candles.
Collect old candles and melt them in a pot. Buy candlewick and place it in your shape/glass/baking tin of choice. Tie the top of the candlewick to a match/stick that you balance across the top. Then fill in the wax. I've made some just recently, see below. i guess i could have made them a bit nicer by putting some die into the wax... next time around!

6. Make your own pine-wreath.
Buy pine twigs, tie them into a wreath with wire. Decorate with slices of dried orange, cinnamon sticks, ribbon, anything you like. It's much cheaper than bying the wreath and it's not too hard to make yourself.

7. Make your own mulled wine spice.
Buy empty tea bags (here), fill them with coriander, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and dried orange peel (half table spoons for a few litres of mulled wine) and wrap them nicely. your friends can then boil the teabag along with the red wine in a pot. yum!

8. Make stuff from salt-dough.
Salt dough is great because it's so easy to make (two cups of flour to one cup of salt and one cup of water). Makes any shape you like that you can then either air-try or bake in the oven. Then paint.

9. Make your own cookery book.
Got any favourite recipes??

10. Make your own Xmas CD.
Kind of lame but also nice.

seven of nine costume

this party i just mentioned also had a theme... star trek!

being almost the only trekkie amongst my friends, i was worried that this theme would not work out so well, but i was wrong. lots of people showed up in great costumes, and i can only recommend it. the party was attended by counselor deanna troi, commander chekoteh, commander william t riker, many many vulcans (including an admiral), ensign kim, scotty, a trill, keiko o'brien, voyager's medical hologram, captain picard, a horta and lots of other aliens. it was great.

being the hostess i had to come up with a good costume too and i decided to be seven of nine.
looking around on the web for ideas, i found a great link with instructions on how to make this costume (here). however, i found the making of this costume using liquid latex rather involved, so i came up with my own version tricks. the final product might not look 100% movie-authentic, but it definitely looks pretty good.

(by the way, for the real seven of nine, take a look here)

what you need and what you need to do:

1. seven's hairdo:
that's easy, here's is a link on how you do the hair.

2. seven's clothes:
for seven's rather tight onesie, i just bought a dance leotard. they are not very expensive and available in all colours.

3. seven's hand (her borg exoskeleton and assimilation machinery):
to make seven's hand implants, i took a rubber glove from the lab. i put it onto my right hand (i'm a lefthander) and drew the outlines of seven of nine's implants onto the glove using a black markerpen. then i used silver acrylic paint to make it silver, and dried it with a hair drier so i could take the glove off. with the glove off, i cut out the bits that i did not need. (doing this, you just need to be careful that you leave enough connective elements in-between the lines that the whole thing still resembles a glove that you can take on and off)

4. seven's occular implant:
to make the occular implant, i drew a lifesize copy of seven's implant onto a rubber glove. then i cut out smaller bits of glove material and aluminum foil to add detail to the implant. whatever wasn't silver, i painted with the acrylic paint i mentioned above. for the corner bit (see picture), i used silver thread that i glued on. finally i glued on two halves of pushbuttons for the final detail and re-drew the contours using a black markerpen.
in order to stick this to my face, i glued plaster onto the back of the implant using the non-sticky side, so that i could then simply stick the plaster onto my eyebrow to attach the implant. it lasted all night.

5. seven's other facial implant (does anyone know what that's for?):
i cut that one out from aluminum foil and stuck a pushbutton onto it. then i glued plaster onto it like it did with the occular implant.

6. the star trek voyage communicator:
using silver and gold colour, i painted pieces of cardboard and cut out the shapes of the communicator, and stuck that onto my costume.