Sugar Plum Baby Shower

One of my best friends is having her first baby, and its a girl! Of course, all of us are crazy excited for her little bundle of joy so we planned the best baby shower for her. I have planned parties before, but this has got to be one of the most fun! I guess since you’re doing it for someone you love, it doesn’t at all feel like work. You really just want your BFF and everyone else have an amazing time.

Bianca Santiago-Reinoso has been one of my closest friends since college. We had both shifted to the same course (Organizational Communication) coming from Political Science for Bianca and Communication Arts for me. We clicked instantly, and became seatmates and groupmates for practically every class we had together. Were both easy-going, and I guess we liked that about each other. We are also both Virgos—our birthdays are just five days apart—so we could see a lot of similarities in each other. From college we pursued the same industry, with me trying out modeling and she styling in a magazine. We both started out at the bottom and worked our way up. We saw each other through breakups, makeups, new boyfriends, marriages, loss of loved ones and now babies. Bianca knows how much she means to me, and I know too how she cant live without me (haha kidding Banks!)

So right before the Christmas rush, Bianca’s BFFs (namely, Carla Fargas, Nicole Hernandez and I) planned a special day to welcome her baby girl. We, of course, did it with lots of food and drink, games and cute little gifts. Our theme was Sugar Plum Fairy, so our colors were pink, silver and yellow.

I love that we were all so into it, which really helped bring the party together. It was a group effort and of course, we also have all of Bianca’s guests to thank for their participation and generous gifts (hehe). Special thanks go to Kate Paras for helping with the food, plates/cutlery and music, and Ornusa Cadness for helping me hang our pretty pompoms!

This is all Carla’s creations: pompoms!! She spent the entire morning making this. Great job!!!

And my job as tallest one in the group, was to tape all of these on the ceiling. Its not as easy as it seems. The heavier ones kept falling so I had tape and retape them.

And… tadaaaah! The pompoms look like floating flowers! Love them! Kudos to Nicole for making these snowflakes on the spot.

Here we have the gift table with more pompoms. Ornusa helped me tape these ones up. Okay, I just realized these ones look like hanging loofahs haha.

For the food we had chips and dip, thanks to Kate!

And lots of food: spaghetti, carbonara and chicken lollipops! Classic party food!

We also had a dessert table with marshmallows, chocolate and this amazing strawberry cake by The Delighful Miss Joyce (send her a tweet to place an order: @thedelightfulmissjoyce). Sooooo yummy! Also thanks to Ornusa for bringing these awesome chocolate eggs!

Marshmallows.

Lots of chocolates, brought by Nicole.

This is super cool: Carla set up this cute baby styling kit for one of the games (more about that later).

Bianca finally arrives! She shows us a “surprise” visitor all the way from L.A. Welcome home Emman!

Just on time. Kate Paras, Nyko Rodriguez, Adrianne Concepcion and Kim Gatdula.

Beshes Adrianne, Bianca and Nyko.

Cousins Nicole Hernandez and Emman Montalvan.

Daddy-to-be Raoul Reinoso and Carla Fargas.

Best buddies for life. Emman, Bianca, me and Nicole.

Bianca poses with her Sugar Plum Fairy cake—she is hardly showing here at seven months.

Bianca with the Chalk team! For those of you who don’t know, Bianca is Fashion Editor of the magazine. With her in the photo are Chalk EIC Nana Caragay, Lifestyle Editor Toff de Venecia and Associate Fashion Editor Kate Paras.

Once everyone got settled and fed, we got to the best part: baby shower games! This one is a favorite: the Baby Bottle Race. This is really simple—all you have to do is put juice (or any edible liquid) in baby bottles, find people to participate and shout, “GO”. First one to finish the contents of the bottle wins!

So happy this bunch was game to join! Apparently, this is not an easy game to win. We didn’t realize how tiny the openings are in these things. You really need to suck hard to get to the liquid inside. This is just orange juice btw. We’re very wholesome (some showers put beer inside or spike the juice with alcohol)!

So after cutting the time to two minutes, this was the result. Bianca’s husband, Raoul won (his bottle is the one in far left)!

The next game was one we all enjoyed, as most of us work in fashion. Its called Design A Baby Tee contest! Remember the baby styling kit I showed you awhile ago? This is for this game. Guests are grouped into three, then all they have to do is design the shirt for Bianca’s baby. Love how creative each group was with their designs!

“B” for baby!

Hard at work with their designs. Raoul’s mom, Tita Goya, was so into this!

Chalk team getting competitive.

So cute!

Here are the entries: Group 1 composed of Raoul, Kim and Joy.

Group 2: Kate, Mari and Tita Goya.

And Group 3: the Chalk team Nana, Nyko and Adrianne.

Can you guess who won? It was a tough call for Bianca because she had to choose between her husband’s group, her mother-in-law’s and her workmates’.

The Chalk team wins!! They all get to take home this delicious body and hair spray by SNOE!!

The last game was super fun (and yummy, and kind of gross). Its Guess the Poop!! The game is simple: each group has to guess what kind of poop (or chocolate) is on the numbered diapers. The one with the most correct answers wins!

In order to guess what kind of chocolate in on the diaper you will have to smell it and for some taste it. It was fun watching them do this (haha kidding).

Different kinds of poop! Both local and imported hahaha.

After Bianca and Raoul opened their many gifts (plenty of ooohs and ahhhs here), it was time for cake! We didn’t want to cut up this cake because it was so pretty, but it was also so delicious! It was gone in minutes!!