M's baby shower

Yesterday was friend M's baby shower for baby boy #2, and it turned out so nice. 

Another friend, Tish, hosted the shower at her adorable house, which accommodated 40 or so adults / kids comfortably, and a few of us helped with games, food, and gifts.  Guests visited and ate the yummy food for the first hour, then we went round-robin and everyone introduced themselves + their relationship to M before we started the first game.  We played some traditional baby shower games that are always fun: the yarn measuring tape estimating how big around the prego mom is, a timed word scramble, and when cupcakes were passed out to all the guests, whoever had a Mickey Mouse sticker on the bottom of their cupcake wrapper won a prize.  Although the rain kept the party indoors, everyone looked really comfortable and happy, and every game went off without a hitch--rare, for such a large group!

I wanted to share with you my crafty contributions to the party, because they were a big hit and hopefully will inspire you in some way.  First, let me start by saying these are super-cheap projects and can be adapted for other types of parties.

Using only a piece of recycled craft paper, foam stamps + ink, I made a giant calendar for guests to guess the baby's birthday.  I specified the doctor's estimated due date, then offered dates three weeks before + after said date.  The most time consuming part of creating this calendar was measuring and drawing perfect lines to create the boxes for the dates {Virgo!}, but other than that, it was really simple and fun to make! 

Guests had fun picking their dates, and I announced to the group that when baby arrives, I will send out a gift to the person who guessed his birthday correctly.  Even some of the kids participated.  So cute.

Speaking of kids, they were the recipients of my other crafty project: lunches.  Seriously, I had so much fun putting these together with Gabriel.  The morning of the shower, he and I began cutting out frog-shaped bread slices {M loves frogs!}, slathering one slice in creamy peanut butter and the other slice in jelly to make fun kid-sized sandwiches.  

We used whole wheat bread {pretending we were making healthy lunches for our own kids} for the sandwiches, and also included tiny carrot sticks, colorful goldfish crackers, and a tiny box of raisins in the lunch sacks.  I found the sandwich-size lion baggies and snack-size polka dot puppy baggies in the dollar bins at Target {30 in each pack}.  Score! 

 

 

Gabriel used the foam stamps {that I had used earlier for the calendar} to stamp the word lunch in blue ink on each lunch sack.  Super easy, cheap, and adorable.  We had an assembly line going in our kitchen and joked that this is what it would be like everyday if we had twelve kids.

At the shower, Tish placed the lunch sacks on a podium marked kids bags on a shelf above a tub of chilled capri sun pouches.  This worked out so well, as it kept the kids away from the adult's food table, and the parents were able to grab a sack and give it to their kid and send them off into Tish's daughter's room to eat and play with the other kids.  It was awesome.  One kid hopped around the living room holding his frog sandwich, singing "yummy! yummy!"... I was touched and thoroughly entertained.  And at one point we spotted M's two-year-old E walking around with two baggies of goldfish, so he must have bartered with another kid.

I am still pleased with the entire event.  You know how sometimes you leave a party and think, they should have done this, or it would have been better if...  I wouldn't change anything about that day!  Adults were happy.  Kids were happy.  And most importantly, M is happy.  It went so well that a couple of us were joking that we should start a business throwing people's showers for them.  But I think we'll stick to our day jobs.

It's Monday!  And it's below eighty degrees in the capital city, so I'm content.  Have a fabulous week!