She's having a girl, but we (we being my coworker Carmen and I, who helped plan the shower) wanted to go with bright gender-neutral colors, instead of a baby pink affair. I started with a simple orange invitation, and we settled on a color scheme of orange, yellow, blue and green.
(Invite from etsy seller mink cards)
Inspired by a baby shower on Hostess with the Mostess, I went with a pinwheel theme, and also added in some tissue paper pom poms. I made the pinwheels myself -- about 16 large and 20 small -- using these instructions. The tissue poms were made using Martha's tried and true method.
For the mantle, I DIY'ed a pennant banner and a bed of wheatgrass with pinwheels.
Growing wheatgrass in galvanized containers is still my go-to party trick. As long as you time the planting right (about 7 days ahead of your party), it's super easy. I buy my wheatgrass seeds from Whole Foods (located with the other herb/flower seed packets).
The food table included more wheatgrass and pinwheels. I also hung poms from the ceiling above the table but forgot to get a picture (gah!!).
Carmen took charge of the food and we had delicious tomato bruschetta, homemade parmesan and thyme crackers, pinwheel (get it?!) sandwiches, vegetable crudite, fruit salad and cupcakes. Being the anal retentive person that I am, I made little labels for each item.
Would you have ever guessed that these cupcakes came from Wal-Mart? No, they are not $2 a piece cupcakes from a fancy bakery. They are $6/dozen cupcakes from Wal-Mart with plain yellow cake and white icing that I fancied up with cupcake liners and pinwheels. (I did specify when I ordered them that I wanted them iced with a round icing tip and not a star tip, because I thought they'd look less grocery-store-esque that way. Again with the anal retentiveness.) And by the way, they tasted delicious!
As for beverages, we served "Melissa's favorite Chic-fil-A lemonade," Izze bottled sodas and cucumber-mint water.
Fun striped straws made for pretty beverages.
The table in the hallway held the "activities packet," pencils and the shower favors, decorated with pinwheels in a Ball jar and a onesie clothesline.
A nod to the mother and father-to-be's techie backgrounds:
I made homemade sugar scrub for favors, just because I loved the "from our shower to yours" line so much.
Here's the recipe I ended up using: regular granulated sugar, safflower oil (there are lots of different types of carrier oils you can use, like avocado oil, sweet almond oil and vegetable glycerin, but the cheapest solution I found was safflower oil from Whole Foods, found with the cooking oils), and a few drops of essentials oils to make it smell good (I used Sweet Orange and Lemon essential oils, also found at Whole Foods). The canisters were from Michael's. Definitely a nice alternative to the $20 tub of sugar scrub I used to buy from Bath & Body Works in my college days.
For our activities, I DIY'ed a little packet of games. There were 3 games, each just sort of cobbled together from ideas around the Internets. The first was a celebrity baby name game, where you had to match the baby name with the celebrity parents.
The second was Baby Price is Right. I had gone to Wal-Mart and researched prices of some common baby items, like diapers, formula and baby food. Everyone wrote down what they thought each item cost and totaled up their numbers. Whoever was closest to the total (without going over of course) won.
And game number three was the baby animal game, with a list of adult animals where everyone wrote down the corresponding baby name (cow=calf, kangaroo=joey, for example). It gets pretty hard when you get down to things like swan (cygnet) and turkey (poult).
I think everyone had fun working away on their packets.
Prizes were kits for growing basil and daisies (from Target), wrapped in strips of tobacco sack.
Finally, it was present time.
Isn't she just glowing?!
Baby showers are always fun, and I loved having an excuse to throw a party and have all my coworkers over.
Best wishes Melissa!
You are so creative!!!!!
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