Halloween Themed Baby Shower For A Baby Boy

My little sister is having a baby in December and Little Sister's favorite holiday is Halloween so it only made sense to throw a Halloween themed Baby Shower for her on the Saturday before Halloween. The difficulty came in trying to figure out how to combine Halloween with the whole Baby Boy thing. It started with an invitation:


I took the whole black and orange thing for Halloween and added in a little blue. The ultrasound on the front of the card doubles nicely as a scary alien. I probably would have done more but the Halloween clip art hadn't yet been uploaded to the SendOutCards web-site, so I figured I'd just keep it simple. I think it turned out nicely.

The next challenge was what do you do at the actual Baby Shower to combine the two themes. The only solid idea I had was cupcakes with baby blue frosting and some kind of Halloween touch; so I headed to Gygi's to see what they had to offer. While there I found some bat candies for the cupcakes, a clear spider web table cloth and a baby blue table cloth, and some Halloween plates and napkins:



Again, I tried to keep things pretty simple. I topped the whole thing off with Little Sister's Thank you cards. By the time the shower came around, the Halloween clip art was available, so I was able to make something pretty cute:


The baby blue argyle patterns came from the baby themed clip art while everything else came from the Halloween clip art. The border around the name had some pretty creepy spiders on it so I just covered them up with some cutsie clip art.

Overall I think the whole Halloween themed Baby Shower themes worked well together. It might have worked easier for a baby girl because I just could have used purple instead of blue since purple is a generally accepted color for Halloween and for girls.

Maybe next year.

My First DIY Project

To be fair I need to begin by saying that I didn't do this DIY project all on my own; I had a little help.

This project was inspired by the fact that I've been doing some shopping lately. In my shopping I've brought home quite a bit of new jewelry. Once I got it home I was reminded how little space my jewelry box had remaining. In fact, I ran out of space in that box a long time ago.

I started wondering how I could organize my jewelry in a way that it would all fit (with room to grow - I'm not about to stop adding to my collection) and in a way where I could actually see what I had. I was walking around work and saw a pegboard in one of the work rooms and thought that a pegboard would be the way to go, so I started by google search and came across this website.

I started on Friday by purchasing some pegboard, some pegboard accessories, black spray paint, and wood glue at Home Depot. While CJ and I were there the Home Depot people asked if we needed the pegboard cut. At this moment I realized that I should have purchased a frame first so I would know what size to have the Home Depot cut the pegboard. We took the uncut pegboard home.

On Saturday morning we bought a picture frame at Michaels. We probably could have spent less on the picture frame if I really wanted to do this the DIY way and make the frame myself but that was a little beyond the scope of this project. Once we had the frame we knew what size we needed the pegboard to be but CJ didn't have anything that could cut the pegboard. So we called my FIL thinking he would have something that would cut pegboard. He did not. FIL called a friend of his who did have the right equipment, so we went over there and got the pegboard cut.

The next step was to wash and dry the pegboard then paint it. I choose black for the pegboard and a black frame because I thought that would make the jewelry stand out nicely. I was also going to paint the pegboard accessories but they were so shiny and pretty when I took them out of the box that I couldn't bring myself to paint them. I think I made the right choice - plus they would have been a pain to paint.

The paint had to dry for about 24 hours so it was Sunday afternoon when I used the wood glue to attach the pegboard to the frame. This didn't go as well as I had hoped it would. The pegboard stuck just fine to the frame but since I don't have any clamps I had to stack heavy thinks on the pegboard to make sure the glue did its job. This prevented me from being able to wipe off excess glue while it was still wet. I tried to get some off after it was mostly dry but I wasn't as successful as I would have liked to have been.

I took Monday off and on Tuesday I had CJ help me actually put nails in the wall of our closet so we could hang the frame and pegboard. After it was stably on the wall I added the pegboard accessories and my jewelry. I'd say that overall it was a successful project - I was even able to put some of my not so heavy scarfs on it.

Pop Quiz

Today's Pop Quiz is on work-place meetings. The better you do on the quiz the more you understand the dynamics of work-place meetings.



1. Why do meetings that are scheduled at 10am start at 11:40am?

a) Because people are incredibly irresponsible and can't seem to get themselves to work on time.
b) Because people don't respect their co-workers and superiors enough to be able to get to the meeting on time.
c) Because people choose not to read emails that they get from their superiors or coworkers.
d) Because the person scheduling the meeting is a push-over and will change the meeting time just because one person can't seem to make in to work on time.

2. Why do meetings that should be in a conference room happen in the department room where there are people who aren't involved in the meeting working on other things?

a) Because someone is too lazy to move a portable white board to a conference room.
b) Because someone forgot to schedule the conference room.
c) Because people didn't show up on time and won't know which conference room to go to.
d) Because those who are meeting don't respect the time and/or quiet atmosphere of those who aren't in the meeting.

3. Why are meetings scheduled for around lunch time, especially when lunch isn't provided?

a) Because those scheduling the meeting never get hungry.
b) Because those scheduling the meeting can't manage their time very well and the only time they've left available for such a critical meeting is lunch time.
c) Because those scheduling the meeting don't care whether or not the people attending the meeting will be hungry during the meeting.
d) Because the conference room has candy dishes and those scheduling the meeting think that candy will suffice when those attending the meeting get hungry.

4. True or False: It is rude to schedule a lunch meeting and provide lunch for only half of the people in the meeting.

5. Why are meetings scheduled and notices sent out only one day/ a few hours/ just minutes before the meeting?

a) Because those scheduling the meeting are too self absorbed to understand that those who need to attend the meeting may have over things scheduled.
b) Because those scheduling the meeting aren't prepared enough for the meeting to schedule it in a timely manner.
c) Because those scheduling the meeting don't respect other people's time.
d) Because those scheduling the meeting know that those attending the meeting won't read the email or show up on time anyway?

Answers: Ok, so there isn't a right or wrong answer to these questions for every situation with the exception of question #4. The correct answer to #4 is obviously "True", but that doesn't mean everyone gets this question right in the real world. For the other questions any answer could be correct depending on the situation. The real point of the quiz is to ask ourselves whether or not we are the cause of the questions.