A couple weekends ago, I helped throw a baby shower for a good friend. This shower was a bit more specific than your average shower--because the mom-in-honor already has 3 children! She is expecting her fourth, but recently moved to Lincoln and had never had a Grace baby shower. That had to be fixed! Since she has both genders already at home, she doesn't really need a lot of baby gear/clothing, but I feel that every baby should be celebrated, and so I had the idea to do a Diaper + Book shower. It was a really fun and the small crowd of good friends made it a good experience. I'll tell you a little bit about it and the crafts I did to give it a bit of an extra whimsical touch.
I love hanging garlands or banners of any kind, but I had seen something similar to the above picture on Pinterest, and thought the pastel colors would really make a sweet entrance. All of the fabric I had gotten from a friend for free, and with the help of a friend (my co-host) J, we were able to make this massive 'streamer' garland in under 30 minutes! The fabric is almost like a crepe paper, though I don't know the content. It literally crinkles just like crepe paper, though obviously is much easier to work with. We just simply tied two strips of each color around a chunky string of hemp/twine and hung it up. Unfortunately, our church doesn't have hooks already above the door frames, so we had to use a heavy-duty duct tape (it really was a fairly heavy banner) to secure it in place. This made a wonderful gift for the mom--to use to celebrate birthdays or special occasions. I would definitely make one of these again!
The view of the table is a little sparse, but we decorated with gender-neutral baby banners that I always have on hand for showers. Keeps it simple and clean, but still celebratory. You can see the stacks of books behind the food--just another bit of 'book shower inspiration' I came across way back when I first wanted to do this. I wish I would have added more, though, as looking back it seems like the table is very under-decorated. There are other books (you can see 2 board books atop the stacks) around the room, and the mom got to keep all of the books that were unwrapped.
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Our menu was brunch, and I loved all the food!
*Mini sausage/ham + egg casseroles in ramekins (with little star toothpicks if you look closely)
*coffee cake with streusel topping
*baked apple + fruit
*donut- holes
+nuts and grapes
*juice and milk 'mocktails' with donut- hole kabobs (see below)
These little mocktails were so fun to make. Obviously most people at baby showers aren't having the real thing because the mother isn't encouraged to drink much (if any) alcohol during pregnancy (or, ahem, at 10Am in the morning). What goes best with donut-holes? Why milk of course! Rich chocolate milk, white milk, and OJ for the non-dairy people was what we offered. Each cup came decked out with cute barber-shop style green paper straws and a large star 'kabob' spear (made with a Martha Stewart star punch and a lot of glue!) with 2 donut holes on it. I was first inspired by this picture to use donut-holes at a baby shower (and also this one), and knew I had those star skewers from the last baby shower I did. I put two and two together and love how they turned out.
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For a lot of baby showers, most moms love (and I mean LOVE) getting hand-made onesies and pants from the attendees. I made this project optional, but everyone did one anyway and they all turned out very cute. New baby will have plenty of clothes that belong just to him or her, and made with love.
The next thing I did was, since this was a book shower, I threw together a children's literature quiz. The two prizes were 1) a book for the mom to keep and 2) a $5 gift card for Barnes and Noble for the winner to keep. Everyone enjoyed themselves, I think, although some questions were harder than other if you can't remember your nursery rhymes!
After the game the mom was able to open her gifts and it was a lot of fun to see all the wonderful books given (from board books to literature books), and all the diapers offered for those first few months!
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