Maryam's Babyshower...

OK Aasi Maasi's been on me case to blog up about Mannam's baby shower yest. she's msged me 4872657 times already. So before she comes back from her bb and msgs me again, here's how it goes.

As most of you know, I threw Maryam a Baby shower at Mom's place yest. The Merchant family being sports crazy, and the baby to be a boy, the theme for the shower followed suit - Sports! =)

I had asked maryam to mail me a list of her friends and their email addresses approx 3 months ago. I also went with her and completed her baby registry with Toys r Us. I wanted to throw her a surprise shower back then, however a week before the baby shower, we were dealt with a major shock within the family and no one was in the mood to celebrate.

I sent out an e-vite to everyone three weeks ago, asking them confirm the dates for either this weekend or the next. Next weekend being muslimfest, most people asked for the shower to beheld this weekend. Alhamdolillah we had an attendance of approximately 30 people - all family and friends.

For food, I had planned to keep it completey sports stadium type food - Pretzels, hot dogs, Mexican Chili, fries, chips etc. At the last moment, Mom included cholay and bhel and we assumed cricket into the list of sports :P. As a staple, we had intended to have lasagne as well but knowing Maryam's passion for mexi food (and a miscommunication and lack of ingredients), at the last moment i switched it to Enchiladas instead. I made Chili on friday afternoon and made the enchilada sauce on fri evening just so there was minimal work on sat. On sat itself, the only thing i made were the meat rolls for enchiladas. Mom made her famous brownies and tried out this new recipe i found for Tiramisu. I have to admit, tiramisu tastes thrice as nice today, as it did yest - im still licking my fingers! mmmm! For drinks we had the fizzy blueberry powerade punch and aasiya's favourite grape punch (which she refers to as the 'eid drink').

On saturday morning, Ayesha picked up zeba and came over. I was being super grumpy, along with being mad at someone, i was food and sleep deprived. I was stressed out to the max and was grilling poor Ayesha for being late. lol. Anyhow, together we raided dollarama for party decoration stuff. Them two, along with Aisha - Z's sister-, decorated the family living room. Remember the room I had mentioned that I was painting last week in time for the shower? well everyone loved the yellow colour on the walls and the room looked gorgeous with all the party decorations. Infact, even the usually ugly carpet, looked very tolerable too!

For the decorations, we nipped the baby's sports wallies and stuck them along the wall of the room to kick in the party fever up a notch. We took pictures of room at the end along with all the favors, I'll try and post them later inshaAllah. Sorry I can't put up pics of us hotties as we had sent the boys out to Playdium for the day and enjoyed a hijab free day.

For favors we had white mesh satin bags filled with rockets, gum balls and a soccer ball keychain. We had initially planned to fill the rockets, gum balls and keychain into blue baby socks and then tie them with a red ribbon, but couldnt find any small socks(can u believe that!?). While the girls took care of the decor, the printer conked out after printing the labels for the favors. THAT was torturous since the printer was also supposed to print out the sheets for two of the party games. So at the last moment, we were left to think out more baby shower games. lol, when maryam came, we just pretended everyting was under control, until ayesha asks her' can u tell us some baby shower games plz'. lol syma and i burst out laughing, trying to hint to ayesha that we're STILL pretending that its all under control.

Anyhow, after decorating the room and fixing the food, I ran up to shower and change. Ayesha, Aisha and I wore basketball jerseys on jeans. Yup! I had intended to wear Carmello anthony's jersey with jeans, but with aunties around I wasnt comfy wearing sleeveless so wore a Denver Nugget's tshirt with Kobe Bryant's Lakers #8 jersey on top. I'm not particularly crazy about the lakers but Maryam is and it was her day so just wore it for her. Plus the laker colours are nice and vibrant ...lol. My favourite colours are still the Nuggets tho. Aisha wore an Iverson's Jersey while Ayesha wore Garnett's (i think, she changed it to something else after). Maryam wore a brown hip skirt with a tight blue shirt that really emphasized the baby (belly) nicely. She was glowing mashaAllah.

anyhow, Aasiya and her mum, Laura were first to arrive. They both reallly look like sisters. Then Farah and Syma followed suit wearing soccer jerseys and lots of stories from their exchange trip to London and Italy(smack in the world cup season!:P). I put them all to work to think up some new baby games. We got together four games. First was the common diaper pin game where you can't say the word baby (and in maryam's case boobooo). If u say it, the one who catches you say it, collects your pin and at the end of the party the one with the most pins wins. The next game was hot potatoes, only with balloons. When the music stopped, the one with the balloon, had to burst it, read the message and do what the message asked you to do. I think the cutest was where Farah had to rap and Maryam had to do the Chicken dance. The third game was the funniest. We took five of eesa's diapers (clean ones ofcourse) and poured in baby food (which beenish picked up at hte last moment) into each. It was HILLARIOUS coz everyone was totally grossed out. it looked like real poop. lol. The custard was jiggling and all. It was reallly funny. Well everyone had to smell or taste in order to guess what flavour each food was. The trickiest was sweet potato and carrots coz they looked so alike. Those who have babies, know that initially when babies poop, their poop is the colour fo the food they last ate. If they ate carrots, its red, if they had peas, its green and so on. Infact, initially before eesa started solids and i was nursing, even if i had spinach, eesa's poop would be green! I digress from the story...

The fourth game that we had selected, but couldnt play because some people had to leave early and so we didnt have time coz we had to serve dinner early. The game was called pregnancy walk. Come on, we all know how funny pregnant women look while walking and believe me its PAINFUL. Anyhow, girls had to walk across the room, holdin a penny between their knees and then drop the penny into a small necked bottle. It would have been fun watching everyone do the preggie walk. lol

For prizes, i had picked out sports car, memo pads from Party Packagers. Very cute and adorable. We packed them in all star sports bags to go with the theme. Anyhow, after the games, dinner was served. After dinner, everyone went for a swim. It was nice and relaxing. I think i came out last. lol. Ayesha and Zeba shared stories of prank calls,.. zeba's stories gave us belly aches. Afterwards when everyone got out, they ate again while ayesha and i stayed in the pool with eesa and kept demanding Aasiya to feed us. lol. Ayesha had aunty's trying to marry her off despite her craziness. lol.

after maghrib prayers, we all had dessert and opened gifts. maryam handed out flowers to z's mother, z's aunts, her mother, aisha and i. I was totally shocked, sooooo wasnt expecting it. May Allah swt reward her. ameen.

then the guys returned, we all dressed up and kicked back and relaxed in the family room. zamzam shared her story of how she reverted to islam and inspired us all with her imaan. Last time it was aasiya at beenish's sleepover - she was interrogated her for 5 hours. lol. zamzam was ever sooo eloquent and helped us all renew our imaan. Someone said, while we take our faith for granted, they chose it and hold it so much more closely to themselves. soon, one by one everyone started to leave. We finally left at 2am! got home at 3, waited for fajr, talked to nayma and then slept in till 12 (i did, imran got up to take care of eeesooo). hehe!

So thats all for now folks! =) you can read up more on aasiya and maryam's blogs. With all the fun I had, I'm dying to throw more showers! Anyone due for a shower yet? (or wallpaper stripping?) :P