It's Raining, It's Pouring... It's a Baby Shower!

I had the pleasure of co-hosting a baby shower recently with my SIL Carrie and my sister Becky for our other SIL, Alicia. This is a long-awaited baby, let me tell ya. My baby brother is terrified to have kids. He has a super queasy stomach (and seriously, SUPER) and is not looking forward to poopy diapers, spit up, boogers, etc…. all the fun stuff that goes along with babies and kids. Every time I think about this baby arriving I just shake my head and chuckle.

On to the fun stuff! I also co-hosted a baby shower last summer and of course after the shower I saw tons of super cute shower ideas on Pinterest. Murphy’s Law, right? So when this baby shower came up, I knew exactly what I wanted the theme to be… I loved the old school library card invites and bringing a book in lieu of a shower card to start the baby’s library. Fortunately, everyone else liked the idea too. I got to work and ordered library cards off the internet and I set off to find a vintage typewriter to type the cards. Lo and behold, my very own mother had an awesome vintage Royal typewriter, complete with working ribbons for my project. I sat that baby down on the dining room table and inserted my library card and started to type. I was gonna have fun!


Isn't she a beauty?

Fun? Oh. My. Gosh. I got one card done and thought this kid is going to be graduating college before I get 30 of these suckers done! I had to type slow, and plunk hard. The library card was sort of a thicker paper so it didn’t lay smoothly on the roller so it didn’t type quite as clear as I wanted. So, on to plan B: The Modern Faux Vintage Plan. I Googled a free typewriter font and downloaded that. I photocopied 4 library cards on one sheet. I opened up my Word program and blindly started typing the information making a “template” to print out on my photocopied sheet of 4 cards. Actually, I must say I did quite well and hardly had to do any tweaking. There was just no way every thing was going to match up perfectly, but I thought it looked great and was a heck of a lot faster than actually typing them! (sorry mom, I know you were excited for me to use the typewriter!)

I then set out to find a book plate template that I could send with the invitations for people to put inside the books. I found a nice Martha Stewart one but since this baby shower was gender neutral (they had not found out the sex) I thought it was too pinkish to be neutral and since it was a PDF you could not change the color scheme. So again, I set out to make my own using Publisher. My SIL had mentioned that Hey Diddle Diddle was one of her favorite nursery rhymes as a child so I was basing the invites on that theme. I used a banner from GraphicsFairy (who by the way has awesome free graphics to use!) and a picture from the nursery rhyme. I cut those out and attached double sided photo sticker squares so they could affix the bookplate themselves and made up a little card explaining to please buy a book in lieu of a card. I then made the library card pockets out of 3 different scrapbook papers in red, blue & yellow for everything to go in. I made the guest list & return mailing labels with the same typewriter font to keep the vintage theme going.

I will share my bookplate... click HERE.

Now comes my favorite part – the menu! We wanted to go with book titled foods. My SIL had mentioned she loved anything BBQ, so our local Sam’s Club has THE BEST shredded BBQ pork for sammies. That was going to be our main food. Then we had meatballs, pasta salad, cheese & crackers, grapes, deviled eggs, ham/pickle roll ups and veggie & dip “shots”. I had my daughter print out and cut pictures of actual book covers and adhere them to pieces of cardboard (cereal boxes) to set by the foods.


Green Eggs & Ham!

Macaroni Salad

Recipe can be found on the FOOD STUFF tab of the site

Grape Caterpillars

Carrie made some really cute platters with fabrics

Veggies from Mr. McGregor's Garden (Peter Rabbit)

Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs

I really liked the idea of drinking out of recycled Starbucks bottles and the super cute paper straws, so I commissioned everyone to drink the Starbucks Frappucinos! I did not participate in this drinking challenge – I love coffee but can not handle it cold. So kudos to everyone that helped! I did however soak most of the bottles, removed the labels and the gooey glue. I then ordered the super cute paper straws (after much research to find the best priced ones!) here on Amazon. We had a punch made of Pomegranate Raspberry juice and Sierra Mist. I seem to not have a picture of the bottles filled with a cute straw. :(

Our dessert buffet consisted of cream puffs, cake pops, French Silk Pie (another thing I ended up without a picture of) and again, a Pinterest idea I really liked was the Mason jar desserts. I originally decided to make a wonderful Cream Puff Cake dessert in them but after doing a trial run first, we determined that it was too difficult to eat that out of the jar. Plastic cutlery would definitely not work. So I came up with an alternate Pinterest recipe of a Lemon Raspberry cheesecake found here. Wowza, I’m not even a lemon fan and I thought they were yummy and very easy to eat (maybe even a little too easy!) :)

another cute platter Carrie made for the Three Blind Mice

Blind Mice

Puff The Magic Dragon cream puffs

Pop Goes The Weasel

the delicious Cream Puff cakes that got the axe... sniff sniff!


Lemon Raspberry Cheesecakes

Another idea we liked was the recycled jars made into decorative jars by painting the lids and adding a decorative knob. They’re so pretty! So I made a few of those and we did a candy buffet and had licorice, Swedish fish, M&M’s and gummy bears. They were a big hit with the kids in attendance!

We realize people aren’t really into doing the whole game thing, so we just had one game of “Who Did That?” and I had asked the mothers of the Parents-to-Be to give me a list of 10 things both of them did before they were 7. I compiled the list and the guests had to guess who did what. It looked like this:

The rest of the shower was spent gabbing, giving advice, telling baby stories, opening gifts and enjoying each other’s company. I think a good time was had by all. :)

The soon-to-be cousins watching the gift opening

For party favors I wanted to do something homemade again. I had made tissue covers for the guests at the last shower I co-hosted and they were a big hit. I do believe everyone appreciates a homemade item and I wanted to give something that people were actually going to use and not throw in the bathroom cupboard or the Goodwill box. You know, all those candles, hand lotions, shower gels etc. that are usually the party favors. So this time I went with spa corn bags. I made tags that had the microwave directions or freezer directions (depending on you plan to use it) and said thanks for attending Alicia’s baby shower. With several different fabric choices, I think everyone enjoyed getting one!