A Boho Baby Shower

We were fortunate enough to have so many people around us that wanted to shower Baby Klepac with their love and support, that we ended up having four baby showers. One with my family and friends, one with my reps and designer friends, one with my co-workers, and one with Derek's family.

The first shower was hosted by my mom and my best friend Carrie. I'll be the first to admit that I am an OCD control freak when it comes to event planning. Luckily my mom and Carrie know this and just let me take the reigns designing the details and stationary for my shower. Don't worry, for the other three showers I was completely hands off. 

Since we weren't finding out the gender of our little one, I wanted this shower to be neutral and beautiful with lots of black, white, gold, and greenery. It quickly evolved into a Boho inspired theme.

I don't love cheesy baby showers, but I still wanted there to be activities my guests to do since no one really knew each other and I thought they would help break the ice a bit. I found a few ideas on Pinterest and then redesigned them to fit the aesthetic of the theme, and match the fonts in our stationary. Its all in the details. 

We had "Wishes for Baby" where guests would fill in the blanks to things like "I hope you learn _______" and "I hope you aren't afraid of _______". We also had a card for parenting advice. Then we had two games: "Baby Bingo" and "Mom vs. Dad". I had played both of these at previous showers and found them really fun. With "Baby Bingo" the guests were given a blank bingo card where they had to fill in gifts they thought I would receive, and when I opened that item they would mark their bingo card. With "Mom vs. Dad" I made a random list of funny things that Derek and I both said or did as kids, and each guest had to guess who said what. For example "Who's first word was kitty?" Hint: It was me.  Or "Who could do the splits by the time they were five?" That one was Derek. Fun right?

I wanted the decor to feel timeless and sophisticated rather than "baby-ish". I incorporated black and white baby photos of both Derek and I that I edited and printed using Parabo Press. I tried to keep the greenery simple by only using two different styles of eucalyptus and a bit of rosemary that I placed in clear mason jars and tied to simple wood embroidery hoops. It smelled amazing!

For the favors I made bars of lavender + vanilla soap for my guests to take home at the end of the shower. I wrapped them in parchment paper and a craft paper sleeve that included the ingedients and a clever little message. 

Carrie made all of the sweets that were served including this beautiful naked cake. Fun fact: she also made our wedding cakes. That's actually how we met!

It was such a fun event, and a great way to catch up with so many of my friends new and old. Baby Klepac was already surrounded by love from the very start. 

| SOURCES |

Stationary, games, signs, labels - Klepac & Co.

Oh Baby Balloons 

Letter Board

Black + White Photos 

Table Runner

Buffalo Check Napkins

White Napkins

Donut Board 

Your Modern Baby: Nesting Without a Nest

Now that our kitchen renovation is at a screeching halt (we're waiting on countertops to be installed), I have gone into full nesting mode. However, because the future nursery is currently the staging area for all things kitchen related I can't really get started. So instead I'm digitally nesting. My goal for the weekend was to start our baby registry, which is seriously THE most overwhelming task. Especially when this is your first baby, you don't have any nieces or nephews, and only a handful of friends with little ones. I was left to my own devices. I spent the entire weekend researching every diaper, stroller, bathtub, and swaddle blanket. Don't worry. I'm a pro now.

I stumbled on Baby List and decided that a universal registry was the best way to not limit ourselves to certain stores. This way, we can choose items from Target to Amazon to Etsy rather than just living at Babies R Us (not that there is anything wrong with that, but it't not our style). So obviously after choosing all of the workhorse items on our registry it came down to the more aesthetic items (crib sheets, blankets, changing pad covers, etc.) And I was all.. "how am I supposed to pick the crib sheet patterns if I don't even know what the nursery will look like?" So clearly I had to stop everything I was doing and design that space real quick. So normal. 

I threw together a mood board of the general style and palette for the room to help me make all of these life altering decisions (cactus sheets or hedgehogs?). 

Oh. Did I mention we aren't finding out the sex of the baby? I'll pause while you collect yourself. 

That being said, we wanted a room that was gender neutral but not grey. So many times people go straight to yellow, green, or grey when they don't know if it's a boy or a girl. However, we are firm believers in color so we did just the opposite. We wanted this room to fit with the rest of our home which is sort of a mid-century meets West Texas vibe. We also wanted a room that would grow with the baby rather that appear too childlike, or theme-y.

| Sources |

Elephant: DWR, Hang-it-All: DWR, Mobile: vintage (similar), Artwork: Jenny's Print Shop, Spine Bookshelf: West Elm discontinued (similar), Crib: Ikea, Rug: Amazon, Bolivian Blanket: The Tiny Finch (similar), Pouf: Target discontinued (similar), Rocker: All Modern, Pillow: Jonathan Adler discontinued (similar), Side Table: Bungalow5, Lamp: Target (similar), Changing Table: vintage (similar)

We tried to incorporate some pieces that we already had along with some new baby specific pieces, while also adding in some personal touches. As designers we bonded over our love of Charles and Ray Eames on our first date. We even had Eames Elephant cake toppers at our wedding, so obviously we knew one day we would have a real Eames Plywood Elephant for the baby's room.

We wanted to keep everything light and bright since our floors are ebony and our doors are black, and that room in particular has 2 barn doors, 2 swinging closet doors, and 1 sliding closet door that are all black. I know. it's a lot of doors. We added in pops of color that aren't stereo typical for girls or boys such as coral, teal, orange, green, yellow, etc. All of which were pulled from this pillow that we uses to hold our rings in our wedding.

I just love having such sentimental pieces in the nursery that we can one day tell our baby about. Now I'm so ready to get started on his or her room, but there is still a lot of work to do to the kitchen and a lot of pots and pans to unpack first. In the meantime, I'll keep trucking away at this registry. 

If you want to see what else we registered for go here. Feel free to let us know your thoughts on certain items we should/shouldn't get and what worked for you. When I said I'm a pro. It's really just wishful thinking.

Your Modern Baby: That's Right.

Well I haven't posted much (or like at all) these days, but we have just been so so busy with house projects, me closing my Etsy shop, client projects, oh and creating a tiny human.

Which I'm sure a lot of you already knew about if you follow us on social media. And as I mentioned in my latest Instagram post, this was a much anticipated and longed for baby. We are just beyond thrilled to finally share our news, and we promise this won't turn into a baby blog, but there will be a few posts here and there and our lives start to shift in priorities. 

Side note: my sweet friend Adrienne from college knitted this adorable hat and mittens, go here to see more of her work she is seriously a knitting wizard.