I decided to plan my own baby shower, since I'm not all into showers that scream "baby" and I'd rather die than sit through hours of goofy games and cooing over burp cloths and baby bottles! Not only that, but because I come from an immigrant family it was important to invite every relative and close family friend!
So....
I came up with the owl theme by doing an internet search. I found this picture of
a cake with a mom, dad, and baby owl. I fell in love with the fall color scheme, which would be perfect for our mid-September shower!
The goal was to give our friends and family lots of stuff to do without breaking the budget, so below are some pictures of the things I put together (with the help of family and friends) for our shower.
Here is the sheet cake that my sister-in-law created inspired by the original:
Awesome, right?? She nailed the colors, and I loved what she wrote on it! Everyone loved it!
The Welcome Table:
My dear husband and I saw an
awesome mug at Starbucks, so we put it at the entrance for people to sign. Everyone loved the idea!
We are waiting to find out if we're having a boy or a girl, so we decided to hold a guessing contest to see what people think we're having. We had a card that our guests could write their name on and put in the box for whether they think it's a boy or a girl. After our baby comes we'll pick a card from the winning box and send them a gift card as a prize!
And here's a closeup of our sign... (frames used at this shower were document frames from Michael's, cost about $1 each!)
The centerpieces:
What I used to make these little guys:
- I found the owl template here (although I added the eyes by tracing around the cap of a thin marker on white cardstock and then drawing in the pupils with a black sharpie).
- Cardstock in neutral colors that I had left over from another project
- Dollar store candle holders
- Dollar store river rocks (half a bag per centerpiece)
- Branches were 80% off at Michael's! I just happened to hit the store at just the right time - all their spring silk flowers were on sale! I used wire cutters to cut the branches smaller so they would fit better
- Ribbon I found at a thrift store that I hot-glued to back of owls. I would have used fishing wire, but I couldn't find it. The ribbon worked just fine!
Total cost for each centerpiece was about $2.00.
The bunting:
I used the same cardstock and ribbon as for the owls and the template that can be found
here. The total length of ribbon was 10' long, the bunting took about 8' of it, so there was plenty of leftover ribbon to tie. Sorry, there's no picture (yet)!
The onesies:
Guests could decorate a onesie, all the supplies were provided! I wanted something as an option beyond just puffy paint, which, for the uncreative mind, could turn disastrous. I found some great ideas on the
Offbeat Momma blog. Feedback from the guests was VERY awesome - they appreciated how they didn't have to "think" about what to do since I provided everything!
So, I Here's a list of what I had available to the guests:
- Framed directions explaining what was available to them
- A bin of onesies through age 12 months in both short and long sleeves. I went with the cheap brand and prewashed them without using fabric softeners.
- I went to Joann's and picked up fabric quarters that were on sale for about $1 each. I picked up a variety of colors and patterns so people would have a good choice. I also washed them without fabric softener.
- I bought Thermoweb peel 'n stick fabric fuse, which is a no-iron way to attach patches and appliques. Absolutely perfect for this project! I removed one side of wax paper from the fabric fuse, pressed the fabric on, cut out the rectangle, and it was ready to go for my guests!
- Stencils I made out of cereal box/soda box cardboard using templates I found online. I put the stencils in small craft bags and taped a "final" stencil on the bag so guests could see what it could look like in the end. I had a dog, bird, different fruits and veggies, star, moon, sun, lizard, turtle, and many more! I used many Basic Shapes at Free Applique (select from the menu on the left hand side). I sized the images using a word processor so I could control how big they would be.
- Spare cardboard in case people wanted to create their own (I cut up some cereal boxes)
- Lots of sewing scissors
- Damp paper towels guests could use if the scissors got sticky
- Letter stencils and fabric markers for text and/or drawing
- Safety pins and tags so people could label their onesie with their name
- A clothesline on which people could hang their finished onesie
Here's a picture of the station I had set up:
And here are some of the results (these are actually from two showers since I had leftover materials).
And here are three where people used their own templates!
The s'mores station:
I saw this idea on Pinterest, and thought I would try it. Unfortunately, I don't think people really knew what to do, so it didn't get much use (or maybe we just didn't have that many people with a sweet tooth??). But it still looked cool! Here's what I used:
- I found this great tray at Home Goods in the bathroom storage aisle for $10 to hold the sterno cups. Here's a similar one on Amazon.
- Sterno cups can be found at any party supply store. These cost about $1.50 each and were only supposed to go for about an hour, but they lasted a lot longer. My only worry was people possibly setting off the fire alarm, but the room was well ventilated and it wasn't a problem!
- The river rocks are the same ones from the Dollar Store that I used for the centerpieces. I think I poured 3 bags in the tray.
- The bowls are knock-off Fiestaware I found at GIANT for $1 each. Score!
The cookies:
My in-laws have cookies at every event, and I was so delighted to see these owl cookies made by my mom-in-law!
For the guys:
I couldn't really imagine my husband and his friends sitting around watching me open presents, so my mom and I came up with the idea of setting up a poker table and having a guy cake for them. I thank Jordan of
Velvet Sky Bakery for making this AWESOME poker cake for them! Chocolate guinness cake with Bailey's filling and vanilla icing on top. I'm so glad there were leftovers!
And, in case you didn't know, that hand's a Full House (get it??)!
And here are the guys outside on a perfect day!
The games:
We had two things going - a match-the-celebrity baby picture game and Baby Bingo. We had unlimited prizes for bingo, so anyone who got 5 in a row got a box of candy.
Here's the Bingo card....
Want to use it? Here is just the card portion. Add your own directions to it by putting it in a word doc, or however else you would want to do it (right click on the image and click on "Save Image As")
The favors:
We had over 70 people on the invite list, so I decided not to put much money into favors. I got customizable candy wrapper from
Shindigz (search for mini candy wrappers).
I used this one. We wrapped them around
mini Hershey bars I got from Wal-Mart. To assemble them, we just put a piece of double sided tape at the bottom edge and wrapped them ourselves. It didn't take too long, and it cost only about $30 altogether! We spread the candy all over the tables so people could take them as they wanted them.
The happy couple:
And here we are at the end of the day, exhausted but happy after the special time we had with our dear family and friends!
