Come on, Spring--and Shawna's Shower

I need a vacation. A real vacation. I've got spring fever, and Korea keeps throwing snow my way. On top of that, Jonathan is working non-stop so when he IS home, he is exhausted. I miss him. :( But there is no vacation in sight. So if any of you reading this talk to my husband, telling him his wife needs a vacation STAT. Seriously.

In other news, I can now finally share the secret project I've been working on. A few weekends ago, some friends and I hosted a baby shower for our good friend Shawna. And, for that shower, my wonderful friend Nicole suggested the idea of a diaper cake. In all my stupidity, I asked, "Well can't the commissary make one?" Dear, sweet Nicole was gracious enough to show me that a diaper is cake is not, as I believed, a REAL cake. And me, being the way I am, boldly proclaimed: "Well, I can make one of those." Yikes.

Here's a step-by-step look at how I did it:

I started out with a large baby bottle, some diapers, and some rubber bands. I rolled the diapers individually, and then rubber-banded (is that a word) them around the bottle like so:

I continued sticking rolled diapers under the rubber band until I had four rows of diapers (I did four rows because I wanted to have a four-tiered cake.) The finished bottom layer looked like this (and yes, that one rubber band stretched THAT far):

I did the same thing for the next layer, forming it around the top of the same large baby bottle. But, of course, this time, I did only three rows of diapers:

Repeat the same thing for the next layer, only wrap this layer around a second baby bottle. There will be a disconnect between the top two layers and the bottom two layers, but as long as you don't move the cake around too much, it's not a problem:

Here is the fully constructed four-tiered cake (diapers used: 134):

Here is the finished diaper cake, complete with ribbons and pacifiers. I have to give Nicole credit for most of the decorating. She is much more artistically gifted than I am. I pretty much just helped her cut ribbon, glue it, and say "Yeah, that looks good right there."

Here is the food spread for Shawna's shower, complete with the hand-made banner (another Nicole Manning creation):

Another close-up of the food. It all looked so pretty, I didn't want to eat it. But I did anyway because, well, fat kid's gotta eat ;)

The diaper cake sat at the center of the gift table.

All in all, the shower was a success, and I think Shawna really enjoyed it (which is the important thing). I even won the "guess how big Shawna's belly is" game. :)