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I am so excited that one of my best friends is having another baby! I planned her baby shower so I thought it might be fun to show you how I did her first one and this one. I am always looking for inspiration, so I hope this is helpful for those who are planning fun baby showers!
I’m gonna put it all out there. I got 99% of my ideas from Pinterest. (Can I get an Amen?) How did we plan anything before Pinterest? Haha!
My friend’s first baby (who is almost TWO now!) is a sweet little boy named Mason. I’m his “Aunt Sarah” and I was so thrilled to be able to throw her a baby shower. It ended up being a few close friends and her mom, but we still had fun! She also had one in Ohio with most of her family.
The first thing I did was decide on the invitation. That was kinda what I designed everything else around. Of course, the main color theme was blue since it was a boy, but it was more of a light blue/aqua color. That was my friend’s wedding color. I found some ideas on Pinterest and then created my own invitation. It turned out super cute.
For the food and drink, we kept it simple. We had homemade chicken salad on croissants, pigs in a blanket, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches (for the picky eaters!), veggies with dip, cupcakes, and blue punch! I forgot to take pictures before we ate, but I took a few after! Oops!
I had simple decorations, including signs for the games. I made those and put them in frames I already had. I got some glass vases, flowers and ribbon at Dollar Tree and made cute little centerpieces.
We did the late night diaper thing. Have you heard of it? We took a whole pack of diapers and wrote funny things on them, so when the new parents are changing diapers at 4am, they will have something to lighten the mood! We had fun with it! Especially me and my sister!
We had a great time celebrating my friend and her first baby! But that was two years ago! Let me show you what I planned for her 2nd baby shower and how easy it was!
Pick Your Color/Theme
I didn’t want to use a specific theme, like animals or something. I’ve never really been a fan of doing that. So I went with pink and gold. I also had some things with flowers. My friend has been liking a lot of clothes with flowers lately so I knew she would like that.
Invitations
I found the invitations on Etsy. There are SO MANY options, so it took me a while to decide. But I think they were perfect for my design vision for the shower. Make sure you have talked with the mom-to-be to decide on the date and time for the shower, as well as her guest list! I hand addressed all the envelopes with faux calligraphy. It took me forever because I am not very good at it, but I think they turned out great! Here is the invitation I chose. You can, of course, make your own on Canva or PicMonkey or another design tool. I did that last time, but this time I was short on time.
Food
We had the shower at 2pm so we didn’t really have to do a lot of food. I probably did more than I should have, but it was kind of my excuse to have some things I don’t get very often! It was mostly appetizer type foods. Chicken salad sandwiches (my fave! It’s my grandma’s recipe), taco roll-ups, meatballs, veggies & dip, fruit salad, punch, and cake. The cake was from Publix and it was so delicious!
I had seen this cute idea on Pinterest where they had children’s books to go with each food. I decided I wanted to do the same thing since I had asked everyone to bring a book anyways. I also made little signs to say exactly what the food was. I even had these water bottle labels.
If you are doing an afternoon baby shower you can totally just do desserts or something really simple to keep it inexpensive.
Decorations
Again, I went simple with the decorations. I got games & signs from Etsy and put the signs in frames. I knew I wanted a few more decorations this time since she’s having a girl. I got most of my supplies for the baby shower at Dollar Tree and Target, but I also got some decorations on Amazon, like this set that came with several different things.
For the table where we ate, I used 2 mason jars with pink scrapbook paper and burlap flowers around them, with silk flowers in the jars. We had made those up for my mom’s birthday party a few years ago and we keep reusing them!
I also saw this cute idea on Pinterest with a stack of brown wrapped boxes with “BABY” on them. We used boxes my mom had and a roll of kraft paper that I got at Dollar Tree. For the letters, my mom just cut them out of copy paper. Turned out great!
I wanted something to put on the front door but I didn’t really have any ideas. My sister had 2 wooden signs that said “baby” and “shower”. My mom had a basket of flowers that she puts on her front door anyways, so she hung the two signs on the basket. It was even better than anything I would have thought of! So cute!!
We had this cute welcome sign (from Etsy, of course!) and I also got the matching thank you cards. I gave those to my friend as a gift, with the envelopes addressed with postage!
Then I made a chalkboard sign with details about mom and baby!
Games
At the last baby shower, we played “Price is Right”, Candy guessing game, and we had a diaper raffle. I wanted to play all different games this time since we had mostly the same guests. The first game we played was Guess the Baby Food. I wanted to play this game too so I had my husband number them and put the answers in a sealed envelope. It was fun and even though I had bought the baby food, I still missed two!
We also played “How Big is Mommy’s Belly”. For that, I used yarn that I already had. (I think I actually got it from the Target dollar spot a while ago!) We ended up having a tie with that game between my mom and my friend’s 8-year-old stepdaughter, Alexis! My mom let her have the prize. The last game we played was Baby Jeopardy. It was fun. I made the game at the last minute with a foam poster board, post-it notes, and a sharpie. It didn’t look as pretty as I wanted but it worked for its purpose! We had fun playing.
We also had a Diaper Raffle. I asked everyone to bring a pack of diapers to help out the new parents. Everyone who brought some had a diaper raffle card that came with their invitation and they put their name on them. We then put them in a bowl and had Alexis pull one out. The winner got a Starbucks gift card! (My fave!) And of course, we did Late Night Diapers again! Fun!
Prizes and Favors
Ok, a lot of people do prizes of bath and body stuff. Well, my mom and sister are allergic to most fragrances and I never use that kind of stuff. I wanted something more useful but still fun. I went through the Target dollar section for a good 20 minutes looking at all the fun stuff. Seriously, my favorite part of the store! I ended up picking out some cute office supplies including a notepad set with small clipboard & pen, a set of mini notecards with a cute pouch and some push pins, and a set of pretty office supplies. Everyone who won liked their prizes.
For the favors at the first baby shower, I had little boxes of popcorn with tags that said: “She’s Ready to Pop”. This time I found these cute cards on Etsy that were customized for my friend’s baby shower. I then cut out 1 ½” circles with this punch and put pink EOS lip balms in them. They turned out so adorable!!
You can do simple things for prizes and favors like I did and make them fit in with your theme with a cute tag.
Baby Shower Checklist
I wanted to make things a little easier for you so I created this cute checklist. Just click below to download it. I hope it helps!
