“Waddle It Be?” A boy or a girl? There was plenty of yellow and lots of ducks at our “Waddle It Be” Gender Reveal Party in late January. We wanted to learn the sex of our little bump while surrounded by family and friends so what better reason to throw a celebration? I called it a “Gender Reveal Party” but Honey said it was really more of “A Party Just to Have a Party”…well that is kinda true, let’s face it, a Gender Reveal Party is just a fancy excuse to have your nearest and dearest over to eat, drink and be merry! A couple of our guests asked us to throw a “Name Reveal Party” when we decided on a name. Well, let’s not get too carried away… We sent invitations out the minute I convinced we agreed to have the party and then we prayed that our ultrasound technician would see our baby’s gender at our appointment that week! The party was two days after our ultrasound when I was 18.5 weeks pregnant and we were THRILLED when the technician was able to see our little one’s gender!! We had her write the gender down and place it in a sealed envelope. We went back and forth over whether we should just open the envelope and look inside. We promptly delivered the sealed envelope to our caterer without looking inside. She made cupcakes for the event placing pink or blue icing inside each cupcake based on what the gender was. We were so excited!! Finally the day came to have our family and friends over and find out if we are having a boy or a girl!! Our front door sported the “Baby S” Duck Wreath I made similar to our Army Wreath for football season. We set up a welcome table in our foyer to display a very sweet book that not only matched our theme for the party but also provided a guest book for our friends and family to write a sweet note to our little one. Also on the welcome table we asked our guests to “take a quack at it” and wear a pink or blue clothespin and then indicate their guess of boy or girl on the chalkboard. "Take a Quack" will it be a boy or girl? We are open to names for our little bump so in the living room we had big teddy bear jar for guests to leave name suggestions. We provided pink and blue paper and it was a riot looking through all those names later! We got some great suggestions! Our kitchen side board got a slight makeover with some yellow and white polka dot fabric to server as our drink table. We served yellow lemonade (of course!) with yellow stripped straws (they were so cute!) and had plenty of water, beer and “mock”-tails on hand. The other moms-to-be enjoyed our “mock”-tails which we made from sparkling apple cider and frozen raspberries – yummmmm! To dress up our plastic water bottles, I ordered water bottle labels that matched our invitations and our “Waddle It Be” theme. The drink menu was listed on our kitchen chalkboard… Yellow and white tissue balls decorated our dining room – these were cheap to purchase and a cinch to assemble! We hung them all over in groups of three like this: All the food fell into a “pregnancy craving” category! We offered something sour, salty, crunchy, chewy and of course SWEET!! We dressed our table up with more yellow and white polka dot fabric and I printed labels for each food category and even made “salty” stickers for the popcorn boxes! Fried Pickles offered something sour Buttered popcorn was plenty salty - yum! Chips and dip offered a crunch Homemade chicken salad on fresh croissants - chewy! Cupcakes = SWEET! To keep anyone from jumping the gun and eating a cupcake before the daddy-to-be and I did – not going to lie, I had nightmares of someone with pink or blue icing on their lip/shirt/face and hearing “Where did that pink icing come from”, “Why is there blue icing on your shirt?” No, I couldn’t let that happen – so I prepared a friendly sign requesting that guests not eat a cupcake until after the magic moment please! When it was time, Honey and I each grabbed a cupcake and got ready to see what kind of little bun we’re cooking! Remember the chalkboard where guests indicated their guess? Well it was definitely leaning toward the pink side… So Honey had his yellow cupcake, I had a chocolate one; we counted to thee and then took a bite! ONE... TWO... THREE!! It's BLUE!! Waddle It Be? It’ll be a BOY! WE ARE HAVING A BABY BOY!! Excited mama-to-be!