Baby Time!

Hahaha no, not baby time for Chart and I.... yet :) Last year was a busy bridal year for my family. I have about 10 girl cousins on both sides of my family. We are all very close in age and up until last year there was only about two weddings that had occurred on either side of my families. However, last year I attended about 7 weddings all within about a three month period. While I Love each of my cousins and was so excited for them and their special days, it was a bit of an over whelming year. Now that they have all been married for about a year, what comes next.... Babies. Next weekend we are throwing a shower for my cousin Kaela, she has waited a long time to have a baby. She was actually one of the first two to get married and she is finally having a little bundle of joy and... its a Boy! She is also the matron of honor in my wedding so I am so excited to be a part of throwing her shower to celebrate her and this amazing next step in her life. I personally feel that no baby shower is complete without a diaper cake ;) I have seen many of these cakes before and also saw some for sale online, although none really fit with the colors for the shower. Therefore I decided that I was going to make my own diaper cake.... I know, scary!
I found this video online which was kind of helpful to get the basics down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwiwZxHNPGU&noredirect=1
I found my self to be a little overwhelmed while at the store shopping for the cake supplies. Not being a mother myself I didn't really know where to start.. My first step was to review her registries online so that I could pick up enough small necessities to adorn the cake with. Selecting bottles however, was a different story. I forgot to pay close attention to the bottle brand on her registry, I thought bottles were all the same.... Apparently that's not the case. I had to consult with my own mother for advice... with only two trips to Target, I finally had all the "correct" supplies to begin making my own diaper cake.

Here are all of my supplies that I started out with :)

I also got a LARGE box of infant diapers because I wanted to make a large three tier cake. Plus I got a cardboard cake base to use as the foundation. (I ended up only using a little more than 1/2 of the diapers in this box for all 3 tiers of the cake.)

Next I began assembling the cake, first you have to role each diaper and secure it with a rubber band. This was by far the most time consuming part of the cake. Then you place a bottle (make sure its the right one, the one shown was not ;) in the middle to serve as the support for your cake, you build the cake around the bottle. I put a large rubber band around the bottle and just started placing the diapers around the bottle inside the rubber band. I repeated this 4 times for the bottom layer.

Then you start the process over, building the second layer. I did about 3 rows for the middle tier, then for the top tier I rolled up some receiving blankets I got and secured them with a rubber band and put rolled diapers around the blankets. (so the blankets took the spot of the bottle on the top tier) Then I tied little bows around the rubber band of each diaper on the top tier. 

Finally all assembled... Time to start decorating, the theme of Kaela's bedding is elephants so we are trying to incorporate that into the shower, hence I wanted to make that the theme of my diaper cake since it will be decoration for the shower :)

Here is the Finished cake :) I really like how it turned out!! What do you think?