The other night I got a chance to throw a little girl’s night + craft night + baby shower all in one event with my friend Erin.

We had a blast planning it together for our good friend Dana, and it ended up being such a fun night.  It was low key, and the perfect blend of girl time, crafts, good food, awesome friends, celebration of life, and pajamas.

Here is a series of pictures from our night with steps on how to make the sweet “girl” banner I made for our party.

Erin and I were anxious for our friends to arrive, so we took a few pictures of ourselves while we waited.  This kept us from eating all the pretty food before they arrived.

After everyone arrived, we ate and ate some more, while catching up.  The guest of honor is a candy lover, just like me.  We are kindred spirits with our sweet taste buds, so I loved having the task of bringing the sweets for the party.  I’m not much of a chief, but I can bake some cookies and buy some candy.  Thank you Erin for making the fresh creme cheese and dill dip plus the awesome tortilla roll ups.  She had the hard stuff.

After we ate, Dana opened her presents, and it was so fun to see her reaction to girly items!

Dana has two boys and is pregnant with her little girl, Jane.  We all found out her baby’s name that night, and it was so fun squealing with excitement for her.  I love it.  I love that she has the same gender and close in age kids as me too.

I have been busily making Dana some hair bows, and last week I showed you how to make the DIY Burlap Hair Bow I made for her.  Well, I used that hair bow and others that I had made to form a sweet bouquet to use as a decoration for the shower.

For the shower, we had everyone bring a frame that they would want to turn into a hair bow holder or a memo board.  The bouquet was pretty for the shower, but now that the shower is over all those hair bows needed a pretty way to be stored.

For exact details on how to create one of these chicken wire frames please read about my Pallet Memo Board.  For this night, I brought a series of wire cutters, my staple gun, and the chicken wire and we got to work helping one another.

It can be a two person job to hold the wire down (from curling up on you) and stapling.  Courtney (featured on the left in above pictures) was a great assistant to all of us.  This was my favorite part of the night as we all sat around in our pjs and talked, laughed and crafted.  I can’t believe I didn’t get a group shot of us all together, but I did manage to get most of our frames in a shot together.

I love creating with friends and I love creating for friends.  It was so fun to craft together, and I also really enjoyed preparing for the night.  I made the fun “girl” banner out of paint chips.

In short, this is how you too can make this banner!

1.  Gather some supplies

• paint chips
• hole/circle punchers
• stickers to spell “girl”
• hot glue gun with glue sticks
• ribbon
• scissors
• brown card stock paper

2.  Punch circles out of the paint chips.  I used my big circle puncher to punch four large circles out, as those would be the circles I spelled “girl” out on.  I used the smaller circle puncher to punch a lot more circles out to use along the top of the banner (on either side of “girl”).

3.  Glue the four large circles in the center of your ribbon and glue smaller circles up and down the ribbon on either side of it.  I just put a small glob of glue on the ugly side of my paint chips and stuck it on the ribbon.  You don’t need much glue.

4.  I then used white stickers to spell “girl” on my banner, and cut out some big triangles out of the brown card stock and glued them on the other side of my ribbon.

That’s it!  The banner is done!  How gorgeous is my model here!?  Dana wears pregnancy so well!

We had such a fun night honoring Dana and her sweet baby and just being with each other.

Have you ever had or been to a more informal baby shower like this one?  I loved being in comfy clothes and having a girls night rather than an early Saturday morning function.

I’m so blessed to have these girls in my life!  Now, Ms. Jane!  Hurry up and get here!  We are all anxious to meet you!

The banner you could turn into a birthday banner or really any celebration decoration!  What kid related outing or craft did you do this week!?  I adore all the entries from last week, but the one that had me giggling was the one about fire!  My friend Heather has boys that my boys would adore playing with, if there were not so many miles in between our homes.  Check out her great post on “Why shouldn’t we look at the Sun?” and link up your own post!