Ahoy, It's a Boy! baby shower

I held a fun baby boy shower at my home yesterday.    I choose a nautical type theme for this shower because I had the above cake mold.  :)  I bought this castle shaped bundt pan years ago when I had a beach theme party for Micah's first birthday.

So then I just ran with all the beachy decor.  Made the pennant banner with scrap book papers and a stencil to trace and then cut the letters.  I used every clear vase I had and poured clean play sand into them and got a bag of shells from Hobby Lobby to add.

In the dining room I used microsoft clip art to print the starfish onto white card stock, then cut around them and added a thin sticky backed magnet.  Cut card stock into simple blue lanterns and hung from the ceiling with my handy fishing line.

The cake was so simple, but so cute!  I used this awesome pound cake  recipe in my aforementioned pan.  This pan does not quite use all the recipe (I poured the extra into a loaf pan...pound cake brownies are so good! ;)  I used a shell shaped chocolate mold for the sea shells...a little how to at the bottom of the post to get that white/tan sea shell look).  I put the whole thing on a cardboard cake board covered in light brown sugar for the 'sand'.  On the side in a bowl I served fresh whipped cream (buy a pint of heavy whipping cream and directions are on the carton...basically you whip it on high for a few mins, then fold in 3 tbsp of sugar and 1 tsp of vanilla...SUPER yummy!).

We used blue napkins and I rolled them around the forks and tied with a piece of twine and put them in a metal red pail.  On the table I got a piece of burlap and layered on an inexpensive simple piece of blue cotton fabric.

This is the gift table.  I put down a clean white sheet and layered on the last piece of burlap and a fishing net.  Note if you have a party where you decorate with fish net from the hobby store, buy it ahead of time and take it out of the package to air out...these things are REAL fishing nets and stink!  The smell went away quickly as I let my air out on my deck for an afternoon.

Here's a little how to on the sea shell chocolates:

First I got some semi sweet chocolate and white chocolate melting candy wafers.  I melted a small amount of semi sweet chocolate in a bowl in the microwave.  I then melted a larger bowl of white chocolate.  I spooned a small amount of white chocolate into each shell mold (I love using baby spoons to do this with).  After I spooned a tiny amount of the semi sweet chocolate on top of each.

Then I took a toothpick and gently swirled them from top of the mold down into the bottom.  You don't want to mix this too well, but just get some brown swirling action into the mold so it will show on the top of the chocolates.  You can carefully hold the mold up and peek underneath to see if it's getting the effect you want.