[ellasmommy]

Hi all. Many of you have posted about having an Open House when you get your angel home. We're waiting for pink, and would like to do the same thing a few weeks after we get settled back in at home. If you've had an Open House, can you tell me about it? What were your invitations like? Did you have a cake? Other food? Did people bring gifts? (we don't need a thing!....housed is crammed full already!).....was it a "drop in" open house? Any other special "touches" you could share with me?? (Can you tell I'm a first time Mommy??? HELP!!! )
Anyhoo....any suggestions would be great!!!

so much!!!

[TyAva]

We are having a party for Ava on the Sunday after her dedication at church. So we will invite everyone to see that and then come to our house for a lunch. We plan to have a potluck/buffet style lunch and of course cake!!! I also bought some table runners and decorations back from Guatemala to decorate with.

The dedication will obviously be for Ava and the party will be a "Welcome Home Ava" / "Tyler is a Big Brother" celebration so that they both feel included.

Have fun planning for your little one's celebration!

[WesieMom]

Our little girl is going to be 14 months next week. She has been home for almost 3 weeks. We planned on having a open house or a shower, but we have opted on a 1st Birthday party! Even though, we missed her very first. We are having one to celebrate her being home and for the first year that we missed. Everyone will get to come meet her and celebrate as well. We are having cake and chips, pretzels, nuts, mints and a long sub that is going to be cut in to pieces and dip as well. Ours is from 2-4pm, so after lunch and before dinner, so we are going with small snacky stuff.
I don't know if I can say Giant Eagle, but we ordered the cake there and it comes with a free smash cake.
Good luck!

[gwenrenee007]

Well our baby isn't home yet, but....what we plan on doing is.
We are having a welcome home/baby shower. We will have around 100 people, and it will be spring by then. So we are renting a pavillion at a local park that has a splash pad, jungle gym, horse shoes, basketball court, and tennis court. We are hoping to have food all from Walmart because they have great prices! You should check them out they have a wide variety of food. We are planning on a sub, fried chicken, macaronni salad, and cole slaw. For a 100 people it is only going to cost us about $150. We are planning on having a cake too. We don't have the invites yet, but we are doing an adoption announcement/invite to save time and money. We are hoping to have it from 12-4 because we will be serving lunch, but if you don't want to serve lunch then make it from 1-4 and just have snacks. We are hoping everyone shows up, but who knows!!! Also someone from the forum mentioned that walmart has cakes that you can put the Guatemalan flag on so we were planning on doing that also.

Anyway I don't know if I helped at all, but good luck!
I hope you get pink soon.

[cbmstephanie]

Instead of having a shower for us my sisters opted for an open house. It was a very nice option. We would have had to have had one anyway for those people that would not come to a shower but would come to an open house. We had it on a Saturday night and although it was supposed to be a drop in and out event, most people tended to stick around for the entire 3 hours. Most people did bring gifts. They had cheese, crackers, veggies, dips, different appetizers and desserts and drinks and of course cake. There was a lot of fun to be had by both children and adults.

[laura-jean]

pic and welcome home theme.

We invited a ton of people, relatives, friends, co-workers, church members, neighbors....

We made it a drop by of 12-5 so that we would could cut down on some congestion in the house.

We had a ton of mostly finger foods.

I usually hire a teen girl from church or someone else to serve, help out and clean up so I can enjoy myself too. ($10- bucks per hr. ) That way the whole thing is not a blur to me and I actually get to talk to people etc.

We also didn't want presents as we have so much stuff already we put on the flyer; Please, no presents, just your presence.

One time, we accepted donations for school supplies for a local orphanage rather than presents for our other child.

Everyone loved the idea and still got to give and also help those less fortunate.

We have to plan another one soon ourselves!

Hope we have moved to the new, bigger house by then!

Have fun! It's so much fun!

Laura Jean

[ellasmommy]

Your wonderful ideas are getting me very excited about having an Open House! Our house isn't huge, so I definitely like the drop in idea, and we don't need any gifts, so I love the "no presents, just your presence" wording.....that's really cute. I can't believe it's actually time to be planning something like this! We should have PINK tomorrow!!!!

Thanks again for your wonderful ideas!!! Others are still welcomed! The more the better!!!!

Mary
PS-- I'm attaching a pic of our Ella.....doesn't she look like she's ready for a party????