You Got a DREAM? In Hollywood, Everybody's got a DREAM!

After a trip to LA with the boy and this Hollywood themed baby shower, I feel like an expert on celebrities! :) Well, maybe I didn't see any real celebrities in California, but I certainly saw quite a few celebrity impersonators at Gen's baby shower!

I cannot believe that my best friend is about to have a baby, but throwing this shower and celebrating with all her family and friends really made it real!

I have to start out by saying that I had the best co-planners imaginable for this shower! Rachel and Petty and I had such a blast putting this all together. Kudos to Petty for the unique (and very Genesis appropriate) theme! After some very productive brainstorming sessions, we had a plan of attack! Petty was in charge of the food and did a FANTASTIC job! Rolled deli sandwiches, pasta salad and spinach salad with feta and cranberries...delish!

Rachel was our baked-goods goddess! She made such a fantastic strawberry cake in the shape of a popcorn bucket. Cute and fantastic!

She and I also had a wonderful time getting absolutely filthy making the Hollywood sign backdrop! Just a quick how-to on this one:

I got a blue sheet from Wally-World (mostly so I didn't have to paint the blue of the sky) and laid it out on top of a plastic drop cloth so as not to ruin my cheap apartment carpet. Then I rolled some left-over black furniture paint onto the bottom half of the sheet to provide a base for the landscape. After allowing that to dry, Rachel and  I had fun! We took every shade of green and brown that I had in my paint-tackle box and squirted and squeezed it out onto the sheet. This, of course, looked AWFUL so we decided to use a couple of paper towels to give it a kind of sponged effect. This looked better but still not great so we folded the sheet back over on itself and blotted it and squished it and crumpled it up so we could make the colors look a tad more mottled. Finally we had something that remotely resembled a landscape!

Rachel had to go home to her adorable son, so I opened the windows and turned on the fans and let that sucker dry. While that was happening, I decided to cut out the letters for the sign. I figured that doing so would allow me to create the best consistency in the width, height and shape of the letters. I cut a piece of letter-sized cardstock down to 8x10 (or maybe a little smaller) and folded them in half to cut out my letters. I wanted to make sure the double letters were exactly the same (and, to be honest, I wanted to save myself some trouble), so I only cut out one of each of those. I used place holders when I laid them out so that I could  ensure the adequate spacing of the letters. I traced them and filled them in with white fabric paint. A couple times. A ton of times, that is...it was quite difficult to make it opaque enough. Then, for a little extra oomf, I covered them in white glitter. It was fantastic. I have to admit!

A couple of other little things we did that made things fun...

E! Microphone and Oscar statuette carved out of florist foam and covered in model magic.

Cake Pops! (remember these from a few posts ago?) Thanks so much to Rachel's roommate, Casey, and her friend Alex for helping us so much with these! You guys saved us so much time!!

Casey also created these awesome paper mums for us! Not only did she save us time, but she saved us money as well. Flowers are expensive!!

Ballot box and ballots for our "most likely mom" awards! There was also a nominee list so everyone could vote, even if they didn't know anyone else at the shower!

Last, but not least, my absolute favorite piece of the puzzle! I created this poster using the same method I did for the giant map a while back. I modeled it on the original "A Star is Born" poster. I recreated the same feeling for the background and everything in Photoshop. It was quite a bit of work, but it was well worth it!

We added in a red carpet and some hand painted details and we had a fabulous time!

 I was so thrilled with the way everything gelled together and how much fun everyone seemed to have! Thank you all for helping us with the details and especially those of you who stayed and cleaned up!