Last year at this time, I was cleaning my house and getting ready to host a special baby shower for my sister's first baby girl! I decided on a "Nest" theme, since my sister had been getting her nest ready for this first child. Brunch is my favorite meal to serve for a ladies get-together, because a lot can be done ahead, and it always looks so pretty!
I was expecting about 14, which is a lot for my house, so I decided to swap my comfy kitchen chairs with the dining room table. My sister could sit between the living room and the dining room, with guests all around, and I could set a pretty buffet in the kitchen.
March is the perfect time to use flowering branches, which I blogged about last year, here. I used one of our tall tart pedestals, made out of a large, ribbed jello mold and nestled a large nest in it, with 3 eggs...Daddy, Mommy, and pink baby! The tall nest was surrounded by flowering branches, like it would be in a tree. I forced some from my backyard trees, and purchased a couple from the store, to get some with full flowers, and some with budded out leaves. They looked simple and beautiful in blue ball jars. I picked up a couple bunches of pink tulips for the table, and I like to put flowers in the bathrooms for special occasions, like this! For texture, I grounded the whole centerpiece with vintage crocheted doilys.
I made two different egg dishes (which I prepared the night before), one simple, with ham, cheddar cheese and cubed bread, and the other containing sausage, hashbrowns, and mushrooms. We had blueberry muffins and sweet breads, and my mom brought the most beautiful fruit! For something different, I tried a stuffed mushroom recipe from Pinterest that had spinich and parmesan cheese...yummy! My sister-in-law made adorable birds nests with chinese noodles in butterscotch and chocolate flavors. They looked so cute on an aqua deviled egg cake plate, they had given me years ago!
Instead of a checklist-type game, I had the ladies be creative. In five minutes, they had to create a nest out of anything they had in their purses, and describe why it was a "good" nest! Here are some of the creations:
Post-it notes, credit cards, money, gum, ripped napkins...it was fun to see what the ladies came up with, and it worked with all the different generations that were represented!
We had such a fun Saturday morning, meeting the new baby, and catching up with old family friends and relatives. I haven't hosted a pretty, party like this for awhile, and remembered how fun it is to pull out all the stops, rather than paper plates and pizza! If you've got a fun party in your near future...make it memorable!
