I love my friends. I really do. But since I grew up in Oregon, went to school in New York and now live in Los Angeles, those friends are pretty spread out. And since life continues to be full of celebrations–birthdays, engagements, weddings, showers of all kind, babies and more–it’s impossible to fly around to celebrate all of them in person. So, for my expecting friend Deirdre, who lives in Charleston, I created a “Baby Shower in a Box.” I sent an email to the rest of our college friends requesting: a baby photo, a decorated onesie, and their favorite children’s book. Packages arrived from London, New York, Minneapolis & Oregon (thank God for Amazon) and I had all of the elements for the box. Laura clearly found her calling as a vet as all of her books feature animals (loved being reminded of Babar). My mom decorated her onesie with cowgirl details in homage to Deirdre’s trip to Oregon where she purchased cowboy boots and fell off her horse. And Eric may take the cake with his book–Eric, the Wild Car–since, in his words, “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have this one.” For the task of making the gifts pretty, I enlisted Amy’s help. She wrapped the books in craft, and the onesies in hot pink; plus, we created the classic baby photo guessing game, complete with answer key. One advantage of the ‘baby shower in a box’ is that you only need one party favor. For Deirdre, I assembled an array of samples of perfumes that all have ‘notes of Daphne’ (the baby’s name). I’m pretty excited about my new solution to showing love for moms-to-be when getting everyone together isn’t in the cards. This way we can all save our visits to Charleston for a time we can meet baby Daphne.