chocolat

well, as promised, i wanted to share the pictures from the work baby shower i planned. the shower was yesterday, and it was a big success. the theme was chocolate, since the mommy and daddy to be refer to the baby as "baby chocolat."

of course, a conference room always looks like a conference room, but i tried to pay close attention to the details in my control and hope the officey vibe would disappear (or that the chocolate fumes would make people hallucinate and not see the glaringly officey things about the room). i think at first, when i told my planning crew i wanted to cover the built-in bookshelves with ivory tablecloths, they thought i was a little nutty, but it worked and i think helped the room to feel more festive and less like a meeting.



because we weren't going overboard with the catering (4pm parties always result in lots of leftovers), we made sure everything was chocolatey. in keeping with the chocolate theme, we had a mini candy bar in pink takeout containers and sprinkled the table with chocolate chips. right before everyone arrived, we poured cups of chocolate milk and regular milk, replete with hot pink straws all tilting to the same side. i find that details like that take only seconds, but make a huge difference with how it all looks.



as discussed, we did my favorite baby thing of all-time, the clothesline, full of clothes in pinks, greens, orange and yellow -- fun and cute, but not too girly (the mom-to-be isn't into overly girly things). these pictures look depressingly conference room-esque, but it looked better in person and you can see how random bookshelves would have been a real buzz kill behind the clothesline. i think the balloons loose on the ceiling helped to create a festive feel as well.

and we started a little library for baby chocolat with some of the classics.

now all that's left to do is meet baby chocolat!