Parenting & New Baby Advice Blog

Archive for the ‘Baby Shower Themes’ Category

Every generation of babies has loved Pooh bear, the A.A. Milne story book character since he came to life in 1926. Disney has since brought him to a whole new audience that parents and children can’t get enough of. If you remember Pooh from your childhood, or you just know a mom to be who loves Pooh, he can be a very cute idea for a baby shower theme.

Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit, and Christopher Robin are all part of the clan that lives in Hundred Acre Woods. You can make your own woodsy haven at your baby shower. Start with lots of honey bees. Pooh loves honey and all things related to honey or bees will make the party more fun. Get giant cut-out bees from a party or craft store or make them yourself with yellow and black paper. Hang them from the ceiling and on walls. Fill a jar with toy bees that you can find at dollar or craft stores, and set them out on tables. You can have people guess how many are inside a jar and offer a prize at the end of the party.

Bring in a potted tree or draw one on giant paper. Tape it to the wall. Find stuffed dolls of Pooh and his friends and gather them around the base of the tree.

You’ll want to center your food around honey and foods that a pudgy bear would love. Find recipes that include honey as the main ingredient. Print out labels for each dish so everyone gets it that it’s a honey cake or bub. Offer honey for tea, and have a few jars of honey around. Use beeswax candles that look like honeycombs. Berries and nuts are also favorites of bears. Why not include bear claw pastries or honeydew melon?

Have little snippets from the Pooh books on pretty cards around the room. Or use clip art of vintage Pooh and friends to decorate walls and tables. Create a walkway with brown paper that makes it look like a journey through the Hundred Acre Woods. Bring in branches or hang leaves from the ceiling to give a forest roof feel.

Play games that relate to the Pooh stories or movies. Make up questions and have them on index cards so guests can answer the questions for prizes.

If you have little children coming to the shower, they may want to dress up as a character from the books. It’s easy to find Pooh costume items at baby stores year round. They love to dress up and you’ll have adorable little helpers to run around and entertain everyone.

It's a really fun day when the theme of your shower is as light and airy as Pooh. He gets into so many adventures and has so many mishaps that you can find one that’s right to display at the party. Have a stuffed Pooh in a honey pot or show him getting stuck in a tree hole because his belly’s so big.

Wrap baby shower favors like small bear candles or Pooh notebooks or stickers in Pooh wrapping paper. Don’t worry about overdoing it as the theme lends itself to over the top fun.

Twins are double the fun, right?  For mom and dad, though, they are double the work!  Double the blessings, to be sure, but double the clothing, double the diapers, the bibs, the food... Help mom and dad out with a twin baby shower.  Here are some fun themes that celebrate twins and the double love they bring to a family.

There are plenty of cute baby shower themes for twins, and you could also opt for a more general twin theme for the entire party.  Let's take a look at two popular themes to get your creative juices flowing.

Peas-in-a-Pod. It's very easy to do peas-in-a-pod.  Your baby shower favors, for instance, can be several green jelly beans wrapped in green cellophane.  Twist and tie at the end, and you have an adorable pea pod.  For decorations, you can get balloons and green cellophane.  Wrap an inflated balloon in the cellophane and make little twists at both ends to resemble a pea.  For twins, simply do two balloons – or two peas in the pod!  You can do this with triplets as well.  You can also:

• Bake sugar cookies and frost them with green icing for peas.

• Make several small round cakes and ice them with green frosting, adding a bit of darker green icing for cute vines and leaves.

• Find peas-in-a-pod salt and pepper shakers for your decorations or favors.

• Make peas-in-a-pod with bath bombs and green cellophane.  Just as with the green jelly beans, place two bath bombs in green cellophane and twist the ends and secure with ribbons.  This is a cute, fun favor for guests.

• Look online for sales on favors and decorations. You can find cute pea candles, green streamers and balloons, and much more to add to the theme of your baby shower.

Thing 1 and Thing 2. Another very fun baby shower theme, this Dr. Seuss-inspired party is sure to be a success.  Again, this is a fairly popular theme – and rightly so! Because of this, you will be able to find premade supplies.  You will also be able to make a great deal of the decorations, favors, and food on your own.  When decorating for a Thing 1 and Thing 2 baby shower, use lots of red, blue, and aqua balloons – not pale shades, but bold, bright colors.  Find tablecloths or napkins featuring bold red and white stripes; dishes and flatware can be bright red, blue, bright yellow or green.  Very Dr. Seussian.

• Make Thing 1 and Thing 2 cupcakes.  These are adorable and simple to make.  Make red velvet cupcakes in red liners.  When cool, frost them with white frosting and add blue cotton candy for their hair (you can buy bags of cotton candy at many stores and online). You can make little labels to stick on the liners that say Thing 1 for some cupcakes and Thing 2 for others. Delicious and mischievous.

• For decorations, simply Google “Dr. Seuss pictures.”  You will find printable coloring pages, which may be a fun party activity, especially if there will be children there.  Otherwise, you can color these yourself and hang them around your room, framed with red, blue, yellow, or green ribbon or dangling from ribbons suspended from the ceiling.  You can also buy big wall decals or signs online.

• Find inexpensive white, blue, and red paper lanterns and hang them around the room.
• Prop Dr. Seuss books around the room.
• Make green eggs and ham.  Really!  You could make deviled eggs and splash a drop of green food coloring in the mixture.
• You must get Thing 1 and Thing 2 onesies for the twins.

Twin baby showers are all about double the fun.  Make sure to acknowledge and welcome two babies in all of your decorations and details: twice-baked potatoes, double cheeseburgers, twin pops, two flavors of drinks or ice cream, sets of two stuffed animals, and, hopefully, two sets of great baby gifts!

As with all my cake posts, I'm drooling by the time I finish my research!  Luckily, my husband's birthday was earlier this week so I was able to indulge in a little cake, although it wasn't quite as inspiring as the cakes shown below.  All photos were found on www.flickr.com

The adorable creation shown in the top left is displayed by mandott on Flickr.  The two layer design features a railroad track piped on the cake plate and a train pieced together with fondant chugging around the bottom layer.  The top layer has fondant mountains and the topper is a railroad crossing sign.

The top center photo is a colorful train engine created by bo_n_arro.  The cake was cut and pieced together, then skillfully iced with buttercream.  Although it was time consuming to achieve the texture seen on the cake, the end result was worth the effort!

There are many ways to add a train to your shower cake, as seen on the top right cake made by sharoncakes.  The fancy 2 layer cake has colorful fondant accents, topped with a cardboard train that is decorated with icing.

The bottom cake shown above is my favorite train cake because of the shape, color and display!  The display board was simply decorated by cakeboxsoc with green icing and small, simple flowers along with a curved train track created out of icing.  The train itself was covered in brightly colored fondant, then small details were added with colored icing.  Although the design is not the most complex of the cakes shown here, it's still a successful creation.

The center cake in the collage shown above is a simple sheet cake, iced with a small train design in the center.  The train was modeled after the one on the tableware that was used at Linda's Kitchen's shower.

The top design in the second collage is a large train piece baked and frosted by bluecakecompany.  The large pieces were frosted and decorated with buttercream and fondant.  I especially love the gum paste babies that were along for the train ride!

The bottom left cake was made with cakes baked in a loaf pan, then cut, iced and decorated with cookies, graham cracker bears and candy pieces.  The tracks were made out of popsickle sticks and a toy conductor is perched alongside.  This cake was made by amanda p. wu, and I found a great instructional video illustrating how to make a cake similar to this - sponsored by the Betty Crocker Kitchens and Howdini.com.

The final cake in this post is a professionally decorated piece with zebra stripes and jungle animals riding inside the train cars.  I love the detailed fondant work done by Pacific Pastries.  She actually created the circus train out of rice krispy treats because they are easier to mold into shape than cake. I would love having any of these as a baby gift if I were a newborn!!

More fun cake ideas:

• Theme Baby Shower Cakes
• Theme Baby Shower Cakes II

It's always fun to have little gifts to hand out to your baby shower guests.  Whether they win it playing a game or you give them out at the end of the shower, make sure to have some matching favors that will highlight your train baby shower!

One suggestion is the beautiful crystal train shown here.  Each multi-faceted lead crystal design glimmers in the sunlight and makes a great decoration or paperweight.  My husband loves to buy me lead crystal favors because of the way they reflect light and create rainbows for my boys to chase around the house!  We also have train-themed candles to decorate your tables or to send home with each guest.

You may want to bake train shaped cookies for dessert at your shower, you can either use cookie cutters as a guest favor, or decorate and package each cookie to send home as a tasty guest favor itself!  Edible favors are always a hit, you can purchase a colored favor box, fill it with the mother-to-be's favorite candy and finish it with a personalized train-themed sticker.  Create your own sticker at Zazzle.com for as little as $.32 each.

More Baby Shower Ideas:

• Top 5 Baby Girl Shower Themes
• Top 5 Baby Boy Shower Themes

When decorating for a train baby shower you can go with bold, bright colors or more muted tones.  Since trains are a very popular birthday theme, it should be easy for you to find tableware and decorations that can also be used for your train baby shower.

Once you find train themed tableware that you like, I suggest accenting these pieces with single color balloons, streamers and/or napkins.  Pick an accent color from the design - score bonus points with the mother-to-be if you can use her favorite color!  Many of the train items I found online are appropriate for a baby boy or girl, but most train-themed showers I researched have been for a boy.

I believe that reading to babies makes them smarter from the time they are conceived, so I try to find ways to tie books in to a shower theme.  There are two perfect book selections for a choo choo train shower - The Little Engine that Could and Thomas the Train.  There are a number of Thomas books based on different themes (sharing, friendship, etc).  Purchase one of these books as a shower gift, use it as for decorating or take phrases out of the book as inspiration for a shower game.

If you want to go all out with your train theme, turn the food table into a food train!  Start with a blank tablecloth and draw tracks winding across the table.  Before sketching out the design, you may want to set up each tray to see how wide the tracks should be.  Use square or rectangular-shaped serving platters as the train cars.  Add Oreo cookies or Ritz crackers for the wheels on the cars, and link them together with licorice whips.  To make the display more realistic you can add an actual train engine at the front and a caboose at the end.  You can also decorate the tablecloth with phrases like "All Aboard" or "Thank You for riding [mother's name] Baby Train".

If your shower will include guests that may not know each other, print some train-themed name tags and ask each person to fill one out when they arrive.  You can also create or purchase a choo choo train diaper cake that is filled with useful baby items for mom.  These diaper cakes make an amazing centerpiece and a useful gift for your guest of honor!

More Train Baby Shower Ideas:

• Train Themed Baby Shower
• Thomas The Train Birthday Party Theme