Parenting & New Baby Advice Blog

Archive for February, 2010

You can do so many things with little yellow ducks that decorating for your baby shower will be a snap!  You can start with duck-themed tableware and use matching crepe paper or balloons.  If you prefer, just purchase a ducky tablecloth and highlight with blue or yellow tableware.  One of our customers suggested ordering a bouquet of blue helium balloons with a single duck shaped balloon in the center.  I’ve also seen this done in centerpiece fashion with blue bouncy balls (or blue glass beads as shown in the photo) and rubber duckies “swimming along”.

Rubber duckies are inexpensive, so use them generously throughout your shower.  They look cute scattered throughout your food table (especially with a blue tablecloth), they make great place card holders and they are perfect for game pieces.  You can even create a miniature duck pond and help your guests relive their childhood!

The yellow duck bookmarks pictured here can not only be used to mark the page in your favorite novel, I like them for keeping my son’s school papers together.  Adhere a magnet to the back of the duck and they are a fun way to hang notes on the refrigerator!

Many people associate yellow ducks with babies – probably because they are both so cute and cuddly!  Because of all the adorable duck-themed baby items available, it is very easy to plan a duck baby shower.  You can use a number of phrases on your invitations including rubber ducky, lucky duck, ducky duck, just ducky or even rub-a-dub-dub (for more of a bathtime theme).  Decorate in yellow – of course – and add splashes of blue to simulate water.  Decorate the guest book table with this unique ducky gift cake that includes a giant rubber duck, hooded bath towel, sleep gown, hat, booties, washcloth, brush and comb.

We also have a great selection of duck-themed shower favors to decorate your tables or send guests home with a treat.    There are photo frames, candles, bookmarks, personalized candy jars or even mint tins with a cute rubber duck announcing the shower date.  Many hosts will send out these mint tins along with their invitations so the guests have a tasty reminder of the upcoming celebration!

I had a lot of fun searching for my favorite barnyard baby shower cakes at Flickr.com.  The animals are so cute and the decorating is flawless!  Whether you order a cake or use one of these cakes for inspiration to create your own design, it will be a great addition to your farm-themed baby shower.

The first cake pictured is a creation by abbymoakler.  She used baby shower bedding as her inspiration, and copied the squares in fondant.  The two layer cake is also covered in fondant and and the bow on top of the cake is also colored fondant.  If you aren’t as talented as this cake artist, you could use farm animal toys in place of the edible animals.  The second cake seems to be something that I could re-create.  The single layer cake is covered with buttercreme frosting, then topped with a graham-cracker barn, pathway made of crushed graham crackers and hand crafted edible animals (I would have to use the toy animals instead!).  This colorful and cute design was made by sarahscakes.

The adorable cupcakes shown above were created by Angelina Cupcake.  The green grass background was created by piping buttercreme frosting over the cupcakes.  They were then topped with a fondant animal heads.  These cupcakes would be perfect to scatter around your barnyard-themed banquet table.

The design on the left uses a combination of cake and cupcakes, fondant and buttercreme decorating.  The cake part sits atop a 3-tier pedestal and is covered with ornate piping on a light green buttercreme base.  The fondant animals are spectacular!  The cupcakes on the lower two tiers alternate with the same light green frosting and a milk chocolate frosting.  They also have finely crafted details, down to the blue butterfly on the pig cupcake.  This excellent display of edible art comes from jdesmeules.  The cake on the right would work perfectly for a barnyard themed shower or a little lamb baby shower.  The three tiers are alternately covered with white and pink fondant, then decorated with relatively simple cutout decorations and whipped cream sheep.  Once again, the design was inspired by baby bedding.  The cake could be easily transformed for a boy or gender-neutral shower, simply substitute the pink accents with blue, green or yellow.  This design was created by Lecake.

Purchase a memorable favor to include with your Barnyard Baby Shower!  We offer a number of adorable baby shower favors like the blue lamb photo holder pictured.  The lamb (which also comes in pink) can be put to good use at your guests’ homes by keeping a recipe in place, holding important notecards or displaying cute photos like the one shown here.  The same lamb figurine is used on bookmarks, keychains and candles to form a complete collection.

You can use our baby shower favors in a number of ways – give them as a prize for winning a shower game, hand them out as thank-you gifts for attending the shower, set them out as decorations and make sure guests know they can take one home or give them to your mother-to-be to use as tokens when guests come to visit the new baby!  Baby themed photo frames work especially well for this purpose, the new mother can add a picture of her new bundle of joy and send each visitor home with a great memory of their visit.

If you are tired of the same baby shower games that you’ve played a hundred times, try a few of these games that focus on your barnyard theme:

Baby Animal Name Game

Prior to the shower, look up the proper names of farm animals and their offspring.  Create a list of each, and have your guests match the mother to the baby.  For example, a mother horse is called a mare and the baby horse is a foal.  More mothers and babies are listed below:

(Cattle)                      Cow                   Calf

(Goose)                     Goose               Gosling

(Duck)                       Duck                  Duckling

(Chicken)                 Hen                    Chick

(Goat)                        Doe                    Kid

(Pig)                           Sow                    Piglet

(Sheep)                     Ewe                    Lamb

(Cat)                          Queen                Kitten

Old MacDonald Memory Game

Another fun shower game tests your guests’ memories!  With everyone gathered in a circle, start to the right of the mother-to-be.  Have this guest say the phrase “(Mother-to-be) has a farm and on her farm she has a (list animal)”  For example, if Mary were the mother to be, your guest should say, “Mother Mary has a farm and on her farm she has a goat.”  The next guest repeats the phrase and adds another animal.  This continues around the circle and gets increasingly difficult as each guest has to remember the list of animals and come up with a new animal to add!  You may want to write down the list of animals to make sure the guests are getting them right!  The game can continue until either someone gets the list wrong, or until there is 1 guest left who can recite the entire list of animals.

Barnyard Babies Hunt

Get your guests out of their seats with a farm animal hunt – similar to an Easter egg hunt.  Purchase a set of farm animal babies like the ones pictured above (photo courtesy of growingtreetoys.com).  Hide the animals around your shower venue and offer prizes for recovering each toy.

When planning your Barnyard Baby Shower don’t forget some fun decorations!  Farm babies are the cutest animals, and they make adorable decorations.  You can find tablecloths, plates, cups, napkins, balloons and streamers and in primary colors or a pastel color scheme.  If there’s one animal that you want to focus on, you can also find baby lamb, baby pig and baby cow decorations.

To bring even more authenticity to your shower you can purchase hay bales or corn stalks (depending on the season) from your local nursery, garden center or farmer’s market.  Use the bales for seating or as a gift collection center, just be aware of the extra cleanup involved (if these items will be used indoors).  Picnic-themed items work well with this type of baby shower – checkerboard tablecloths and summer foods (corn on the cob, potato salad or a cool ice cream dessert) are a great addition!

Decorate your gift table with the awesome barnyard friends diaper cake shown here.  With 35 diapers and 13 accessory items, this cake is a great display piece and a useful gift for the new mom!  Scatter beanie babies or stuffed farm animals around the remaining guest tables.

Some fun final touches for the shower include a big sign welcoming everyone to “(mommy-to-be)’s Farm”.  Surround the sign with animal-themed helium balloons and have country music playing in the background.  Find themed gift wrap and decorate the guest of honor’s chair with wrapping paper, ribbon and bows.

If your new mom grew up on a farm, lives on a farm, or just wishes she was back on the farm, consider throwing her a Barnyard Baby Shower.  This fun theme is perfect for a summer shower where you can have an old-fashioned outdoor hoedown complete with haybales and barbecue!

Growing up in a rural community, I’m actually surprised that I never attended a Farm Animal Themed Shower.  Of course, when I was growing up there weren’t a lot of themed showers at all – how boring.  I would love to host or attend a farm-themed shower now, especially with all the adorable invitations and baby farm animal decorations that are available!

When choosing a baby shower theme, it’s important to go with a basic color scheme as well.  Primary colors work best for a barynard baby shower, but there are also some cute pastel pigs and lambs that will fit right into the farm.  If you go with primary colors, use checkerboard tablecloths and make a big red barn for your guests to deposit their gifts.  Have a “baby animal hunt” (similar to an Easter Egg hunt, but hide plastic animals instead of plastic eggs) and dance to the chicken dance for prizes!

Choosing food for your barnyard baby shower will be loads of fun too – make pigs in a blanket, chicken wings and milkshakes.  Make a black and white cake to resemble a cow, put together round cakes and pink cupcakes to recreate a pig, or go all out like the cake shown below!

photo courtesy of cakewrecks.blogspot.com