A Woodland Bridal Shower

My brother is getting married in 3 weeks!  My mom, sister, sister-in-law and I threw a bridal shower for his fiance, Lauren.  The decor for their wedding is nature inspired so we thought we'd go along with the same theme for the shower.  

I made a simple linocut block of a tree with the couples' initials and a heart carved into it.  I made a second linocut decorated with leaves and used brown blockprinting ink.  I think it came out really cute!  Instead of stamping 25+ invites individually, we simply scanned an image of the original invite and printed them in color.

Obviously, the colors we chose were green and brown.  It is an odd choice for a summer bridal shower, but when it was all together it looked very elegant.  Here's a terrarium centerpiece my mom fashioned from a punch bowl and a cloche:

Another picture without the cloche on top . . . I made the little heart with the initials from a wood heart and a woodburning pen.

We used moss and burlap to dress up the tables, too.  By the way, the cupcakes are from Chattanooga Cupcakes and they are AMAZING.  We also had blueberry muffin sandwiches with ham, hashbrown casserole, two kinds of quiche (a bridal shower staple), fruit skewers and yogurt parfaits.

My mom stamped the hearts on the napkins with permanent ink.

The yogurt parfait station: my idea!  It included vanilla greek yogurt with strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and homemade granola.  Yum . . .

While I'm bragging about my ideas, I also came up with a fun activity to keep everyone busy while we waited for all the guests to arrive.  We didn't want to do any corny, awkward games (and all shower games are corny and awkward).  I came up with the idea to have the guests make thank you cards for Lauren and Ethan.  Lauren loves handmade things (she even did the calligraphy on her invitations!) and she was excited about the idea of everyone making cards together.  I've been making cards for years so I had tons of stamps and other materials.  I laid out stamps, ink, liquid chalk, glue, paper, scissors and blank cards.  I only put brown, green and some neutral colors out to keep with the natural theme.  The guests really seemed to enjoy the activity.  It was great to get to do something fun that Lauren and Ethan will actually use!  I also had a "Handmade By" stamp that I had everyone stamp on the back and sign their name.

A few of the finished cards:

I think overall it was a great shower!  The food was good and the company was pleasant.  I'm very excited for Lauren and Ethan and happy I got to contribute something for them.  Congratulations, guys!

Left to right: My sister Brooke, Me, Lauren and my sister-in-law Mari.