My animal baby shower

My wonderful mother recently threw me an adorable baby shower. She is a planning machine, and thinks of absolutely everything, so this blog post won't even begin to do the event justice, but it was such a special day, I wanted to try and share it.

As we were doing the baby gender reveal at the shower, my mom planned a cute animal theme shower. With help from my high school friend, Renee, I created the invites to play on the animal theme.

Mom decorated the room with stuffed animals and yellow and white roses - it was beautiful! She used little animal picture holders for place cards, and had regular and frosted animal crackers as the favors. She used tiny cookie cutters shaped like animals as the "bow" on the favors - as I said, my mom thinks of every detail!

Mom started off the shower with the gender reveal - she read a poem that she had originally found and cross stitched for my father. She changed the words and gender pronouns to be fitting for me and Ella. The poem stats, "I want to be the kind of woman God intended me to be, for she follows me. I want to be the kind of woman I want her to be, for she watches what I do." Her eyes filled with tears, she announced that we were having a little girl!

Playing off the animal theme - we played a game that required the guests to match the name of a given animal to the name of their baby - so Cows were matched with Calves.

The cake was adorable, and once again, had little animals on it - and it was delicious to boot!

I was blessed to celebrate with friends and family and completely overwhelmed by their generosity. I received many wonderful gifts, but was particularly blessed by the homemade gifts and true labor-of-love items we received for our new addition.

My talented Aunt Kathy made Ella a beautiful bear quilt. I love the bright colors!

My cousin Mary made the cutest sweater, hat and bootie set. I just love the coral color - and can't wait to see Ella in these items!

My sweet cousin Annette also made Ella a blanket. It is a beautiful mint color with an adorable heart in the corner - I just love it and the soft yarn it was made with!

Mary Jackson, a sweet lady from my parents church made Ella a grey and yellow blanket (those are the colors I'm going to decorate her nursery in). I love the flannel backing - great for baby snuggling!

Thank you so much to everyone for showering us with love, support, and prayers. Josh and I are so excited to start this next journey of our lives with our little love, Ella Suzanne.