Tips for a Modern Baby Shower

Looking for some unique ideas for a baby shower this spring? As every savvy auntie knows, there is a trend toward being eco-friendly with these parties, so take note of ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle while baby shower planning!

Invitation Tips:
On your baby shower invitations, ask guests to bring a small book instead of a card to begin Baby’s first library.

To cut down on paper waste, ask guests to wrap their gifts in nursery-themed fabric…cute, useful, and eco-friendly.

Decor:
Try the following colors to bring your baby shower theme together:
Girl—Fuchsia, pink, and lime green
Boy—Aqua, blue, yellow, and lime green
Unknown—Yellow, aqua, and lime green

Hang bright-colored onesies on a clothesline. These can be given to the mom-to-be as additional shower gifts. Use one of these onesies as a guest book, providing fabric pens for special messages to the mom-to-be and baby.

To reduce waste, use ceramic dishes, drinking glasses, silverware, and plates instead of disposables.
Fill baby bottles with bright-colored candies, and place around the party tables, side tables, and gift table.

Use pacifiers of all colors as confetti around the party room.

For your centerpiece, place brightly colored floating candles in a large bowl of water to add festive color and light to your party table.

Games:

Guess the Baby:
On your invitation, ask each guest to bring a picture of herself as a baby. (You may want to remind guests to bring the photo before the shower, because without the photo they can’t be involved in the game.) Take the picture from each guest as she arrives and lightly pencil a number on the back, being careful not to damage the photo. Make a list so you can tell later which photograph corresponds with which guest. Then give each guest a piece of paper and pencil, show all the guests a photograph, and tell them the number. The guests write down whose photograph they think it is. Do the same with the next photograph. The guest who identifies the most photographs correctly is the winner.

Don’t Say “Baby”:
The object of the game is not to say the word “baby” at any time during the shower. Give each guest a diaper pin when she arrives and ask her to pin it to her clothing. If one guest hears another guest say the word “baby,” she can claim the speaker’s diaper pin. The guest who collects the most pins is the winner. (If you want, you can set a time limit of 30 minutes so that people can relax after that!)

Mom Trivia:
Ask the mom to give you 20 interesting pieces of information about herself. They can be anything, but facts about the mom when she was a baby or a kid would be particularly fun! Use these answers to create a quiz for the guests to take. Whoever gets the most questions right wins!

Menu:

One of the best and easiest ways to create snacks that match a baby shower theme is to purchase small cookie cutters in the shapes of a baby carriage, teddy bear, baby bottle, baby rattle, etc., and use them to create cute tea sandwiches filled with smoked salmon, cucumber and dill, egg salad, and/or chicken salad. The cookie cutters can be used to make darling iced sugar cookies as well.

Other snacks to serve at your baby shower include:

• Chips and dip: French onion dip with chips, salsa and guacamole with tortilla chips, or spinach or hot artichoke dip with pita bread cut into small baby shapes using the cookie cutters
• Cheese and crackers: A variety of crackers along with a blend of hard and soft cheeses
• An assortment of fresh-cut vegetables with a ranch dip
• Chicken skewers served with teriyaki or peanut sauce
• Shrimp served with cocktail sauce
• Mini quiches
• Seasonal fruit salad 
• Deviled eggs
• Olive and sweet pickle relish tray
• Nuts
• Chocolate truffles
• Personalized M&M’s
• Mini fruit tarts served with a small scoop of raspberry sorbet

Place the nuts and candies around the party room to get people who don’t know one another mingling!

For a parting favor, send the guests home with personalized mint tins. These are a cute remembrance of the event, and also quite useful!

--Lisa Kothari, Peppers and Pollywogs

Comments

[baby gifts]

Choosing your garden is the best option for venue and all your foods should be mouthwatering for children. yummy!

[baby shower]

Really laying out nice list of baby shower ideas. The games on "don't say baby" is quite creative actually. That's really a good way to save money and buy more stuff for baby in the future.

[Holly]

Thanks for adding a list of possible snacks for a baby shower. I'm needing all the help I can get. Great ideas!

[Lil Baby Cakes]

Some really good ideas for baby showers. The cookie cutter sandwiches are a really cute idea and can be a good way to save money on food as well for the shower.

[baby hair bows]

It was a good read! You've got nice tips here. Very smart.

[Baby Buggy]

Very good article. I really enjoyed reading it. We offer low weight buggy prams for your babies and toddlers. These are easy to handle and carry for parents. They also offer second hand buggy prams as well.

[Matt]

Great article

[dylan]

So cute

[Renee]

If you want to save on the waste and paper, do email or online invites. Those designed for can be saved as a graphic or pdf and a copy printed if the mom-to-be wants a copy for her scrapbook, but she may do digital scrapbooking as well and could use the jpg file to plop right in that way too.

[sibyl]

I am having a modern baby shower by inviting all our friends and having a cocktail party. We don't see all our friends nearly enough so what a better reason to get together. Plus let's face it...if if it is a close friend as soon as you get a shower invite you start thinking how you can get out of it. I am also throwing it myself because I actually want to enjoy it.