Baby Shower!

 So while Lala celebrated her birthday all the way over in France (week long celebrations it seems and belated parties and all that!), I hosted my first ever baby shower here in Karachi.



 Now, baby showers are a recent export to these parts , around 10 or so years old. But that is not to say we sub-continentals haven't had our own traditions in the same vein. My mom and her generation used to call them godh bharai (lap filling in literal translation) which basically denotes that the mother to be will have her baby in her lap soon.And this rasm or custom had it's fair representation in Bollywood movies as well. Hum apke hain kaun ,anyone? The most famous one of those. Incidentally, this was a classic desi trope of the younger sister falling in love with her elder sister's bro in law. And vice versa.

Didi's devar be going craaaazy!

 Anyways, as we all love to follow 'angrez' or to be more accurate 'American' holidays/traditions/celebrations, we now have baby showers.
Godh bharai had all the married women and elders, putting dry fruits (nuts for you Americans) and all sorts of accompaniments in the mommy to be's lap, to bless her with. Baby showers is all about games and food and gifts. Which is fun in it's own way.

This baby shower was for someone close in the family and she being a slight control freak like yours truly was pretty much overseeing the whole thing herself.  lol.
The shower was held at tea time and inside since it's too hot and bug-gy outdoors. The venue was Studio Cafe , one of the myriad sheesha cafes-but-also-a-family-friendly-place on Kh Shahbaz.

 Some party favors and chocolaty goodness was laid out, and we all  suffered from varying degrees of sugar comas later on.

We had some young guests there as well who were more interested in the decorations than in the games and all that. The young gentleman holding the balloons was a bit upset at no longer being the baby of the cousins.

 

The Momma to be with her friends. Dont worry, she had the sash and crown and all that, it just wasn't there for this picture.

Cutest gift to be won in the games. By yours truly! For a non mommy to be, I have mad belly ribbon measuring skills and baby related word unscrambling skill, apparently.

The smaller gift table, since we had no space for another, so the rest of the gifts were on the floor to the side.

The basket was my gift to MTB and just contained a bunch of random goodies. I got  this printable from classyclutter and just stuck it to a piece of pretty teal-ish card paper along with this little poem I found on pinterest. Of course I modified it according to the things I got.

 The food was fantastic, which was great because we had heard some really mixed reviews since the revamp of the place a few months back.Since it was a tea time thing, there were finger foods and bite size munchies along with unlimited drinks (orange juice coke, pepsi and stuff, naturally). The peri bite (chilli stuffed with cheese and deep fried in breadcrumbs) were a huge hit and the kids loved the dark bbq wings. I however fell in love with the buffalo chicken sticks

All in all, it was a good family fun type of an event . I won a couple of prizes, had good food and great conversations and came home with loads of candy.

Also at the risk of sounding whiny, I seriously need to take better pictures, so I really should save up and buy that new camera. The android low light issues are killing me!

Hope you all have a great week ahead....