An Intimate Mini Baby Shower

*****I am adding a prologue to this post.  My daughter, Amanda, delivered her son, Matthew Samuel, on November 28, 2015.  His early birth was a surprise, traumatic and filled with much concern.  I had prepared this post several days before Matthew's birth and was planning on publishing it on November 30th.  Of course, I didn't feel comfortable publishing it while my family was going through such a rough time of concern and care for Matthew.  Thankfully and miraculously, Matthew is finally home with his mom and dad and two siblings.  Although there will be careful watch for him for an undetermined amount of time, all is well now.  I  finally felt it was OK to share this special day with you.  I have left this post as I had written it before Matthew's birth.  I feel it is most authentic that way.  To be honest, the shower feels like an eternity ago but, I am so happy that there is now good news to report.

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As I mentioned at Thanksgiving, my daughter, Amanda, is expecting her third baby any day.  I know, traditionally, the rule is that moms only get one big baby shower but, come on, how can you not celebrate the birth of every new baby in the family.  So, to that end, Brittany and I decided to throw Amanda an very intimate and mini baby shower for Amanda.  We gathered the girls in the family together at Brittany's apartment to have a little baby shower luncheon.  The only girl missing was Kylie, my almost two-year-old grand daughter.  She was home with her dad to give her pregnant mom a tiny break before the birth of the baby.

Here Amanda, with nieces Julie and Stella, is testing some yummy brownies Aunt Brittany baked... BEFORE lunch I might add!  

Brittany has a big picture window in her apartment that worked wonderfully for serving the lunch buffet.

I was in charge of the flowers.  This arrangement had toppled over in my car and arrived a bit disheveled which kind of upset me but it managed to regroup and looked pretty on the table.

I also made the pom poms but Brittany put everything together beautifully.

The theme of the shower was elephants because Amanda's bedding has elephants in it.  The sex of the baby is still a surprise so, Brittany chose the colors of mint, cream and grey. 



She found the puffy elephant wall hanging, wooden elephant and giraffe and elephant picture all at Hobby Lobby, one of her favorite craft stores.  I thought Brittany displayed everything beautifully!

 The food was yummy too.  We had the choice of chicken and egg salad, turkey, roast beef and cheese for "make-your-own-sandwiches" along with veggies and dip, fruit salad and chips.  The perfect lunch for an intimate baby shower.

Here we are: 

Brittany, me, mommy, Amanda and Jessica



Oh, and what shower wouldn't be complete without favors.  These were pretty easy.  I found the wooden elephants at Michaels.  I filled plastic treat bags with animal crackers (to match the elephant theme), tied the bags with a mint striped ribbon and glued the wooden elephants on the ribbon with a glue gun.  Very easy!

This was the other arrangement I made.  This one arrived unscathed!

One more view of the lovely buffet Brittany created.

Finally, we got to the fun stuff and Amanda was able to open her cute little baby gifts.  Now we just have to wait and see what our new bundle of joy with be, a boy or a girl!