Pancakes & Glue Guns: Fall Gender Reveal: white pumpkins & paper flowers

This time last year I was 16 weeks pregnant and anxiously awaiting the 20 week appointment on October 24th where we would find out if baby L was a girl or boy! We went back and forth about the idea of a "gender reveal party." I'm the girl who literally melts in a puddle at work when the office has a cake for birthdays (not just my birthday - but the entire month of March birthdays) yeah, so drawing a lot of attention to myself wasn't something I was totally interseted in.

And then once we had decided that gender reveals were kind of silly and just asking for attention, I rolled over in bed one night (I was still able to roll side to side, unlike my later beached whale of a self) and said "HI, so, remember how we don't want a gender reveal? I think we DO want a gender reveal!" And then I never looked back. The planning began that night as I laid awake.

Since we are displaced right now and living out of state while the husband attends law school, this was a perfect reason to get to see a few friends and family.

We had our ultrasound appointment on 10/24/14 and then the reveal was scheduled for 11/1/14. Talk about a week of madness!! I put together this box for a friend and asked her to open the envelope, use the clip, write on the chalkboard, and lace up the hockey skates with pink or blue!! You might remember the hockey skates from our pregnancy announcement here.

Finding out on the 24th and waiting a full 8 days until November 1st was easy about 5% of the time and difficult the other 95% of the time. However, at this point in my heart I was almost completely sure baby L was a girl. We even had our name picked out and occasionally called her by her name before the official reveal. And no, I swear we didn't peek.

I would be lying if I said we didn't think about opening up the envelope and finding out ourselves before the actual gender reveal in front of our families...but ultimately we stuck with the game plan and waited until the first.

One of the toughest moments was getting this text from our friends who wrapped up our box, knowing they had seen the confirmation of our little peanut's gender and knew before we did!!! In this picture the skates are all laced up and the box is full of the pink or blue goodness!

The friends we asked to help us with this were a couple, where the guy attends law school with my husband. His fiance-now WIFE-(how cool! and confirmation again that I wait too long to blog) sent him in with the box. No one in torts, or civil procedure, or whatever legal class it was had any idea that the silver box with the big white bow on it sitting in the aisle held the biggest secret about our new addition!

Instead of keeping it with him, my husband brought the box out and left it with me while I waited for him to finish class.

I then had to sit there in the cafe staring at the box for the entire duration of the class and consider that I could definitely, most certainly, peek and it would be fine - in fact I think I even justified that it could be funny since I always unwrap all of my Christmas presents early and then wrap them back up. But I didn't. (Or did I?.......???)

So for the decorations, the second best part to actually finding out! Because we were finding out the day after Halloween we didn't want to completely ignore the season and go with decor in bright florals as is my usual go to, but instead decided to go with fall neutral colors and pumpkins. We went to a great pumpkin patch near us that had unique colored pumpkins in pale shades of almost pink and blue and white!

We first picked out 30 small pumpkins for each guest to write their name on and place on the table next to either a girl or boy sign to show their guess. Here's our trunk full of white pumpkins. They are cute right?! A good blend of integrating the season but not being stuck with orange everywhere.

And here's how the table came out with two pumpkins - one a baby girl, and one a baby boy that we asked guests to sit their mini pumpkins by. We cut the tips off of the pacifiers and then glued what was left of the pacifier to the pumpkin. Now, although I knew, knew, KNEW in my heart it was a girl I couldn't risk being wrong in front of the whole crowd - so I put my pumpkin on the boy side. My husband was honest and put his by the girl pumpkin.

I also made the chalkboard signs below to hold up once we figured out what he or she is and then a chalkboard sign that listed some of the wives tales. I tell you, I didn't get too much advice when pregnant, but boy did I get quite a few guesses about the gender with very serious explanations as to why they were 100% sure they were right based on how I was carrying, my attitude, complexion, sickness, etc. I think 9 out of 10 people guessed boy. And at the gender reveal almost all of the pumpkins except for 6 were on the boy side!

Here's how the table where we stood to find out ended up coming out. We also brought one of the canvases from the paper flower wall take 2 that is now currently housed in the nursery! Also take a look at those pumpkins - they definitely look pink and blue, right!?