Stay at Home Who?: Creative Pregnancy Announcements!

As social media continues to grow and become the new American past time, it is becoming increasingly more common to see special announcements in picture form for all sorts of life events; one of the most common I've been seeing lately are pregnancy announcements. Pregnancy announcements run the gamut from simple: a status update, to the very elaborate: professional photography sessions.

Wait. . . quick backtrack here: I'm pregnant! 34 weeks today actually so I figured I'd better get some pregnancy related material on here while it is still relevant.

Back to announcements; I never did anything fancy for my first 2 pregnancies. With my first in 2008, I simple started posting some photos of me with my belly in them at some point, and people got the hint from that. With my second in 2010, I the picture route with the "I'm going to be a big brother" shirt, definitely nothing fancy. Not this time though, I was fully ready to jump on the elaborate announcement bandwagon!

There are so many adorable ideas out there, it took me a long time to really come up with something I liked. There are definitely some popular ideas that I really like such as the shoe lineup:

From: The Carolina Couponer blog

I have seen a few friends use this one and I think it is adorable, not to mention nice and simple since there are no wiggly children to pose!

The other one I really liked that has been gaining popularity are the math related ones:

From: The Road to Hope blog

That last one is a personal friend of mine and the best part about it is she was a math teacher so it just fit so well.

I wanted something to fit perfectly for me too, but as the weeks started to fly by, I was still at a complete loss. Then I saw the perfect inspiration from one of the many photography blogs that I follow on Facebook. The sad part is that I don't have the link saved, nor do I even remember who the photographer was to go searching for it. It was an outdoor scene with 2 kids at a fancy party table with a caption stating they were celebrating the fact that they were getting a new sibling. I hadn't seen anything like it at that point which was refreshing.

I figured I could do my own spin on it. Logistically it was a pain because I was on a tight budget, but I wanted the adorable table setting in an outdoor setting. I have loved several photo shoots in the past that incorporated tea parties so I decided to do a tea party picnic. I didn't want the pregnancy announcement part to too subtle, so I figured a 3rd place setting with a "reserved for baby brother" sign would cover that pretty well. I hit up a local junk/thrift store, and for less than $40 I came up with a picnic basket, and a bunch of fancy looking china for a 3 person tea party. The trick to keeping it inexpensive was to buy mismatched items which of course sell for a fraction of full sets. I don't think any 2 items matched, but it worked so well.

My mom made the dress for my daughter, and the only item I had to buy for my son was the hat so that was all very inexpensive. The photography was done by my lovely sister who is an amateur, but has a pretty good grasp on things already. We did the shoot right before sunset so that the lighting would be perfect, and I think it turned out pretty darn cute!

It was a big hit amongst friends, though at 28 weeks pregnant, most already knew. It was still a cute announcement, and I may just have a canvas printed to preserve this special time.

Here are a few more ideas for those currently brianstorming: