Baby Shower- Palooza

I have soooo many friends who are pregnant right now! I am excited about all the babies, but I'm gonna need people to spread their due dates out a little bit please and thank you :).
This past month, I have helped out with and attended 4 baby showers! All these gifts and decorations have given me tons of great opportunities to practice my skills with my sewing machine. I also feel like I may have missed my calling as a quilter. I have had so much fun making baby quilts!
First up was Michelle's shower. I didn't get any good pictures from that shower, but I did make her a cool gift. I  bought 2 packages of baby washcloths from Target and made them sturdier by sewing fabric to the back of them. They came out super cute.

Next was Rachel's shower that I hosted here at my house. I made her some burpies by sewing thick fabric strips and ribbon to some old-fashioned cloth diapers. (At her other shower a few weeks ago I made her a baby quilt which you can see HERE). I forgot to take pictures of them, but I used some of the same fun fabric that I used to make the washcloths above. For the shower, I helped with decor and made a banner out of the giraffe fabric she used for her crib bumpers. I think it turned out pretty great. It was a little time consuming, but the process was easy. 

close up of the banner

SIDENOTE: I have come to the realization that sewing projects can be very time consuming. In my mind I think that a project is going to be a breeze and take like 2 hours, which in actuality turns into 2 days. Oh well, back to the shower...

So here's some more pictures of all the fun stuff from the shower:

Name banner that Rachel made for the nursery

Emily, me, Rachel, and Bonnie

The last shower of the season (ha!) was Emily's shower. I helped out with that shower as well and was in charge of making a diaper cake. I may have gone a little overboard with it (I made the baby shoes!), but I was really pleased with how it turned out. 

baby boy shoes, they have little blue airplane buttons on the sides :)

Since I had so much fun making a quilt for Rachel's baby, I wanted to make one for Emily as well. This one was a little bit harder since she is having a little boy. I think I went to the fabric store every day for almost a week trying to decide which fabrics would go together and be appropriate for a boy, but still be cute for a baby. I knew I had a winner when I found the baseball and puppy paws fabric (her husband is a huge red sox fan and they have a dog that they adore). 

Front of the quilt

Back of the quilt

close up of the edging- puppy paws!

Here's a few more from Emily's shower:

Bernoulli, the shower mascot :)

me with Julie, the proud aunt-to-be!

Whew! I am showered out! Can't wait to meet all these sweet babies!

Rain

I am loving all this rain we have been getting all week! It has made my garden flourish, and we already have a few little tomatoes. I hope it just keeps on coming :).

The pups love to "monitor" the backyard activity when they are forced to wait inside during rainstorms

ONS Congress

I got to take a few days off of work this week (wed-fri) and come to New Orleans for the ONS  (Oncology Nursing Society) Congress! This is the first time I have attended something like this, and it was a really neat experience. It started on Thursday, and ended on Sunday morning. They have a huge exhibit hall where all sorts of medical companies have booths and give out info and free stuff. The rest of it is scheduled sessions where there is education in all sorts of areas of oncology nursing. There were so many things to choose from, and I learned soooo much! It was pretty fun to be around so many nurses and to hear about all the new and cutting edge processes, resources, drug updates, trials, research, and ideas for practice improvement. I already started a list of things to work on and implement at my office when I get back :). I tagged along with Sylvia, a work friend from my old floor who is the network oncology educator for Seton, and who has become a mentor for me at my current job. She is really cool. Two of her friends (Cindy and Dawn) also rode with and stayed in the room with us. They do community cancer team stuff and are in charge of a lot of things at Seton. So they were great people to hang out with and to get to know. The three of them have been friends for about 20 years and have worked for Seton for a very long time. They were all so fun to be around, and are kinda crazy :). there were also 3 people from my old floor at Seton, so it was fun to see them and hang out with them for the weekend as well.

One of the cool parts of the weekend was when Sylvia won the award for oncology certified nurse of the year. Pretty cool deal b/c that is nationwide award among all the oncology certified nurses. Here's a picture of our group from the award breakfast.

L-R: Victoria, Me, Sylvia, Dawn, Lisa, Karla, and Cindy

After the conference sessions wrapped up each night, we found some time to see a bit of New Orleans. We walked through the French Quarter (and of course down Bourbon street),  rode a trolley through the Garden district, ate dinner at a local restaurant, and walked the riverwalk along the Mississippi river. Here's a few pictures of the fun.

cool balcony in the french quarter

boat on the mississippi

Fun before the trolley ride

I hope I can start going to more conferences so I can get more continuing education hours (I should end up with around 15 hours after I finish all the evals from the weekend- and I need to have 100 hours in 5 years to keep my certification), and so I can keep learning! I really enjoyed hearing all the ideas and all the great things happening in the world of oncology, but I am ready to get home tomorrow. I miss that sweet husband of mine and our pups! Hope everyone has had a great weekend!