Mama to BEE, my little sister's baby shower

I'm so excited for my sister, Natasha to have this little baby boy, joy, that is steadily being woven in her belly.  She's having a little boy that her and her husband have already named Solomon, and we will nick name him Sully boy. CUTE!

The task to throw a baby shower naturally fell on my sister and myself.  The Theme : Mama to Bee. However, a place to host a party seemed to be in slim pickings.  We could have went with a community center of sorts, I even had a friend offer her home to host it ( that was super sweet). BUT, the thought of decorations, and cooking food really overwhelmed us.  My sister that was hosting with me works a lot and is not a - gosh how do I put it? She doesn't cook much, especially for a crowd. As far as decorations, I would have hired someone to do it and called it a day. But then the shower would have been the only thing that I wanted to spend as far as a gift, and I rather give a gift. BUT, this is my sisters first baby and we really wanted it to be special.  Gosh, no- every pregnancy is special and needs a baby shower in celebration of that individual.  I think it's just the season of my life that I am just so busy with things in my day to day and my boys that I just could not function when it came to planning a shower and the menu and the decorations. My sister Oksana was traveling Europe for a few weeks and got back to town the weeks of the scheduled shower. So that said we needed to find venue that was affordable and perfect. 

I'm telling you right now, we found a place that really was perfect. Even the theme! It's Elka bee's Café, http://www.elkabeescoffee.com/  It's right in Happy Valley, 5 min away from all of us. The theme there is a perfect "tea shop" / café.  They host small parties during the day or morning the back room area with a tea/ sandwiches type menu or we got the entire café after hours at 6pm.  They allowed me to bring a cake and the rest was served. We didn't need to decorate or clean up. Just showed up, celebrated my sister and Sully and went home. So easy. No stress. and pretty awesome.  And, super affordable !

I wish I did this with my second son.  Goodness, I was so stressed out.  I was in triage getting my labor stopped the night before because I was up decorating, cleaning, and cooking for the party.  With the last pregnancy I had it at one of my friend's town house's community center and I asked everyone to just bring a dish to share and it was great.  We had to clean up right after - no waiting till morning, so that was tiring.

Keeping with the theme I got a few honey cakes from the Russian store, and ordered the cutest little honey jar favors from Bee Way honey ( I love their honey! https://www.facebook.com/beewayhoney/) . 

We did a diaper raffle.  This is a great idea and everyone should do this! Just have guest bring a pack of diapers to be entered into a giveaway from the host or the mama to be.  Oksana got a prize and there was more diaper packs then people ! I love that, thank you everyone that did this.  Natasha's sister in law even made a diaper cake that was perfect!

Any how, the moral of the story is that we live in a fast paced world that consumes us at times. But stop and celebrate life. And don't stress. Just throw a party at avenue that will take care of everything. The end.