Parenting & New Baby Advice Blog

Posts Tagged ‘baby shower ideas’

There is no one single “perfect” baby shower centerpiece, just as there is no one single perfect mother.  Mothers are unique, and what makes them perfect is how well they know their babies and their ability to take care of their needs.  If you are having trouble deciding on a baby shower centerpiece for a friend or family member, take a cue from all the great mothers out there.  Know her, and try to take care of her needs.  Luckily, it is fairly easy to anticipate the needs of an expecting mother!  Here are some ideas so your centerpiece will be perfect.

• Dig into a diaper cake.  It’s cuter than it sounds.  Instead of flour and sugar, this cake is made from rolled up diapers (cloth is excellent, but disposable works too). These are formed into tiers, and then adorned with baby care items, such as small toys, pacifiers, bibs, bottles, socks, hats, mitts, and more.  You can find instructions all over the internet to help you make the diaper cake.  The best part is that it is easy and practical.  Mom can use everything on the cake.  And no calories either.
• Along similar lines, you could make a baby sock rose bouquet.  Again, you can find the easy instructions online, but really, it is very similar to just folding socks as you would after doing laundry.  You place them on floral wire, and wind green floral tape around the wire to make it look like a stem.  You can place these in a bouquet with other flowers for a very cute, usable, centerpiece.
• String a clothesline across the room where you wish the focal point to be.  From here, hang little onesies, shirts, dresses, pajamas, hats, and other baby clothing with wooden clothespins.  Use diapers to spell out “Baby Shower,” “Baby,” or the baby’s name if possible, and hang these in the center or in an alternating pattern with the clothes.
• Find a small galvanized steel tub, which are available at Amazon and other vendors, and fill it about one-third to half full with water.  Add cute rubber duckies, and maybe a pink, blue, yellow, or light green ribbon around the tub, and you have a very simple, thoroughly adorable, centerpiece.  And mom can use the duckies again.

So far, these have all been budget-friendly, usable baby shower centerpiece ideas.  These are great for practical moms, as well as those who haven’t had time to shop yet!  But if the mother whom you are honoring already has most of her essentials, it is time to move away from the practical.  And what better place to move on to than food?

An edible flower cookie bouquet is a gorgeous – and delicious – centerpiece.  You can order one or you can make your own using pineapple, grapes, strawberries, and melon.  Add some chocolate, and you have a stunning centerpiece that will be a huge hit with all of the guests.

Even if mom is watching what she eats, every woman needs to indulge every once in a while, and what better time than at her baby shower?  If you want to win her heart, get a chocolate fountain.  These make incredible centerpieces because not only do they offer warm, flowing chocolate, they are actually very attractive.  You can make the presentation even prettier by arranging strawberries, cherries, pretzels, marshmallows, pineapple, biscotti, cake squares, and other goodies around the fountain.  You can purchase a fountain or rent one.

The centerpiece can set the tone for the baby shower.  Know what the guest of honor likes and you'll make the perfect decision every time.

Related Articles:

1. Personalized Baby Shower Favor Ideas
2. Bottle Themed Baby Shower
3. Baby Showers A-Z

Here’s an idea you can use whether you want to create a personalized baby gift to give at a baby shower or if you want to include a fun craft-making session as part of a baby shower. You can decorate onesies. Onesies are those cute little baby bodysuits that snap at the bottom. You can find them at any discount store.

What you’ll need to create a decorative and personalized onesie is the following:

• A package of soft onesies (found at discount stores in the baby section)
• Fabric markers (found at craft stores)
• Iron on paper (found at craft or office supply stores)
• Baby designs (find clip art online)
• Scissors
• Pressing cloth or towel
• Computer and printer
• Iron

If you’re going to include this craft session as part of a baby shower, set up a station and include all the materials already prepared so your guests can get right to the fun.

Before the shower, find clip art of baby-themed designs or cartoons online. Type in “baby clip art” and you’ll find a number of free designs pop up. You can choose from rocking horses, bottles, pacifiers, teddy bears and more. If you know the theme the mom to be has chosen for her nursery, try to find designs that relate to it. If she’s going with an ocean theme, you could do starfish or boats or seashells.

You’re going to want to cut and paste the designs into a Word document on your computer. Simply right click on the design to save it onto your computer. Then paste it into your document. If you’re challenged on the computer, ask a tech savvy friend to help out. Chances are they’ll know how to do this easily. Once you’ve arranged all your designs in a Word document, you’re going to print them on Iron-On paper.

Insert the Iron-On paper into your computer. Be sure you face it the correct way according to the manufacturer’s directions inside the package. You should try a test run before you use the actual paper to make sure everything is aligned the way you want it. Go ahead and print your designs onto the Iron-On paper.

Cut out the individual designs and arrange them on your craft table where the guests will be making the onesie baby gifts. You’ll also want to place the fabric markers, iron, and other supplies there.

When guests arrive, you can let them help themselves to the supplies to make a onesie of their choice. All the guest have to do is iron the decal onto the onesie. (Protect the table surface with a towel or pressing cloth.) Then guests can write with fabric markers either the baby’s name or “with love from Gramma.”

Note that sequins, beads and other tiny objects should not be used as they can come loose and baby could swallow them. Also, do not use 3D puff paint for this project as it tends to dry scratchy and may not be the best surface for baby to cuddle up against.

Guests will love joining in on this project and the resulting onesies will be a delight for the mom to be.

If you are doing this project as a gift for a baby shower you will be attending, you can roll your finished onesies into a bouquet and tie them together with string. Present them as a bouquet with your gift card.

If you have never hosted a baby shower before you may not realize just how much it costs. You have the expenses of baby shower favors, invitations, food, plates, forks, cups, drinks, and games and prizes and possibly even more. However, there is a way that you can throw a wonderful baby shower on a shoestring budget. It just takes a little planning and some creativity.

Invitations

You can go out and buy the invitations or you can get creative and make them yourself. It’s not always easy to come up with the right material but you can make invitations with construction paper or stock paper. If you know calligraphy, you can create a formal invitation that is unique and beautiful. If you are going to use a theme for your baby shower then purchase stamps that display the theme so you can stamp each invitation. Save on stamps by passing out as many invitations as possible. A personal invitation means more when it is hand delivered.

Decorations

Over time, it’s easy to accumulate streamers from various occasions but streamers are not that expensive to buy per roll. You can decorate with streamers in a variety of different ways. Streamers can be tied, twisted, placed in a special design, and can come in many different colors. Search online for templates that can be printed out and applied to cardboard to hang up at the party. Place some string through the top and hang decorations from the ceilings. Use the streamers to highlight or accent.

Purchase some small pieces of material from your local sewing shop and cut them in half. Fold them up to resemble a cloth diaper and use a small safety pin to pin the diaper together. These homemade cloth diapers can be made with any color or theme, depending on what you want the decor to look like. You can place name cards in the diapers, a number used to draw on the doorprize for the evening, or a baby shower souvenir. Flower seeds are a great souvenir to place inside the cloth diapers with a little note telling everyone to plant their flower seeds on the day that the baby is born. You may want to place the flower seeds in saran wrap or zip lock bags so the seeds will stay fresh until they are planted. You also want to make sure that the flowers fit the season. You can also use the cloth diapers to place mints or nuts in.

Games and prizes

There are several baby shower games you can play with guests that cost little to no money. Draw a baby face, measure mommy, and guess who the baby is. To draw a baby face, you need a paper plate and crayon. For the measure mommy game, you need cheap toilet paper or yarn. To guess the baby, you simply need all the guests to bring a baby picture of themselves and have the guests match the baby picture to the right person. You will still need a prize for the winner who got the most right.

Prizes should be simple like candles, bath and body kits, or a disposable camera. It’s best to keep the prizes simple so you can use most of the money on everything else. After all, it’s about the mommy-to-be and not so much about what prizes there are to take home.

Are you in charge of planning a baby shower in the near future?  Do you want a creative way to pull it all together?  If so, then consider one of these two themes for a day of fun and laughs.

Babify it!  Theme
Ok, so it is not a real word, but nevertheless, this theme can produce a truly wonderful baby shower.  Rather than simply choosing a few pastel colors for plates and streamers, consider ways to take the term baby and make it apply to everything.  Serve baby back ribs with a salad of baby carrots, baby corn, baby spinach, and baby scallions.  For dessert, consider bite-sized baby cheesecakes, or even go so far as to pick up a few of the nostalgic candies with baby themes- baby bottle pops and pacifier shaped candies.  You can even go one step further and serve drinks out of baby bottle bottoms.  Remove the nipple, pour and serve.  The best option for bottles in this case would be those with a large base, such as Avent bottles.  At the end of the day, wash them, sterilize them, and give them to the mother-to-be. Throughout the shower, play traditional baby shower games such as “name that baby food” and “diapering relay.”

Tea Party Baby Shower Theme

Tea Themed Baby Shower Table Setting from Pixelpackinmama at Flickr

If you would rather opt against the over-the-top baby theme, then perhaps a tea party would be more suitable.  This party idea is especially successful for the mother-to-be that is expecting a little girl because mini tea sets, intended for play, can be used in the festivities.  Line up a number of the small plastic tea cups, and fill each of the small pots with a different flavor of tea.  Much like a wine tasting, allow the women in attendance to try a few sips of each flavor.  There are a number of excellent online gourmet tea sites that will provide loose teas in a large variety of flavors, or if you are looking for a quick solution, go to the local grocery store and peruse the tea aisle.  For a sit-down style tea party, the teapot place card holders shown to the right make excellent favors too.

You might also serve small desserts that would typically accompany a tea party and play games that would be featured at a child’s tea party. These might include musical chairs and a dress-up race.  For the race, place maternity clothes, shoes and socks in a large pile at the end of a long space; have women form two teams and lineup in their teams at the opposite end of the room as the pile.  One by one, women should race down, choose a full outfit from the pile, put it on and race back.  Have the next woman in line take the clothes that the other woman is dressed in, wear them, run to the pile and change into a new outfit.  This process continues until one team goes through their entire line. The winning team might be presented with a small tea gift basket.  At the end of the party, wash the tea sets thoroughly, and give them to the mother-to-be for more tea parties in the future.

There are lots of baby shower themes out there! Here are some more great ideas:

• Monkey Baby Shower Ideas
• Free Bridal Shower Game Ideas
• Jungle Themed Baby Shower
• Sports Themed Baby Shower
• Noah's Ark Baby Shower
• Farm Animal or Barnyard Baby Shower
• Ladybug Themed Baby Shower
• Under The Sea Baby Shower
• Butterfly Themed Baby Shower