Last month my mom and I hosted a baby shower for my lovely sister-in-law, and her adorable baby bump. We are SO excited for this baby girl to get here in just THREE weeks! I love having parties, and I've never had a chance to host a baby shower before, so this was pretty much my ultimate Pinterest experiment.
I started small with a few DIY details
Pink and white polka dot paper bows on white straws and pink and white polka dot washi tape on tea lights, in short glass tea light holders from IKEA.
For favors I painted the SHE with pink glitter glue on Hershey bars. Adorable and delicious.
I made a quick ribbon wreath with yellow white striped and pink and white polka dot ribbons. (Do you see why we need to paint the front door?)
I wrote a little note on the chalk board door. I need to practice more often so I can get the words a little closer to a straight line, and maybe practice my cursive letters and bubble letters and handwriting in general. Or buy a stencil.
We used Pink "It's a Girl" and solid purple balloons to mark the house and the sidewalk.
We used golf tees to hold the balloons down, but one of them flew away. So if you try this make sure you are very careful during installation and keep them a few inches in from the walkway because one of the balloons was popped, see the missing purple.. oops. I will absolutely do this for a party again, and next time I'll just buy more balloons for accidents and so I can have them a little closer together.
In the foyer I put a diaper cake (diapers covered in receiving blankets and topped with a mommy and baby fox) surrounded by the Hershey's bar favors and my mom hung cute little outfits on a clothesline adding all kinds of adorable to the entryway.
We had all of our food book (and one movie) themed. Chicken Little Chicken Salad with croissants, Eating the Alphabet fruit salad, Veggie Tails Artichoke Dip and crackers, Memoirs of a Goldfish Goldfish crackers, If you Give a Cat a Cupcake Chocolate or Vanilla cupcakes with vanilla butter cream frosting. My mom even ordered the most adorable little cupcake toppers from Etsy; they were little sugar books.
I'm pretty sure this is where she got the cupcake toppers: Little Hope Cakes
A closer look at the adorable book toppers.
We continued the book theme a little with two of the drinks, we had Pinkalicious Pink Lemonade and Dr. Seuss's ABC Tea is for Thompson. Then of course water and regular lemonade.
There were a lot of poop jokes flying around this table. We asked everyone to bring a book instead of a card to start Baby Girl's library so we used library cards and pockets to make the guest "catalog", people could write the name of the book they brought on the card in the pocket and then leave a little note next to the card on the page. It turned out really cute.
We set up a little onesie painting table in the living room, which was probably my favorite part. I love painting onesies. I try to make an "I'm new here" onesie for my friends when they have babies, or at least for the first one. I do have a special place in my heart for all the oldest children.
As you can tell, I am not a huge fan of games, I prefer activities like the onesie painting and note writing. We did play one game, Baby Shower Bingo. I got this free printable HERE, and everyone filled in the presents they thought my sister in law would get. It's just something fun to keep you interested in present opening.
I wanted to have a special backdrop for the present opening, so I used this amazingly fun idea from Pinterest. I had my brother tape the streamers to the top of my bookcases and then my mom and I twisted them and taped them to the bottom. Then Christopher tied balloons together in groups and taped those to the top of the bookcases. It took a little time, but it was definitely doable and I'd totally do it again. It was an easy, really inexpensive way to make that corner extra festive.
Baby Girl,
I can't wait to meet you! We are going to have so much fun snuggling, reading, playing, singing, baking, and hanging out together! I already love you so much!
Love,
Aunt Natalie