So you've been asked to host a baby shower for a family member or friend. You'll need invitations, decorations, food and games. But where do you even start? My suggestion is to start with a theme that ties everything in together, and one that I have recently used is a Children's Book theme.
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Baby Shower invitation
Everyone has a favourite book from their childhood, whether it is a classic such as Bambi, a LIttle Golden Book, or the Very Hungry Caterpillar. To help the new Mum build her own library of favourites it is a clever idea to ask guests to bring their favourite book from childhood to donate instead of a greeting card. To arrange this we included a note inside the invitation which read "Instead of a greeting card please write your inscription & wishes in your favourite children's book so we can help stock baby's library".
A search of the internet will provide you with hundreds of baby shower game ideas. You can incorporate the theme by adding a couple of games which relate to books or book characters. Examples I used include:
Nursery Rhyme Trivia - answering nursery rhyme trivia questions such as "Where did the old lady with too many children live? Answer - In a shoe
Nursery Rhyme trivia game
- Scramble up a book title to make it like a puzzle, e.g. Emerald yolky food with accompanying pig product = Green Eggs and Ham
Guess the book title game
- Print pictures of children's book characters and stick them to a board / poster. Ask guests to write down the names of the characters. To cater for different aged guests, add some older characters and some more recent ones.
Guess the book character game
- this game is lots of fun. You can do a Boys or a Girls Names race (if the Mum to be knows the sex of the baby) or both. Ask guests to write a name starting with each letter of the alphabet. It sounds easy but, trust me when I say, it becomes very tricky when you get to the letters Q, X, Y and Z! To tie in with the theme you could even ask that it be a book characters name. As a bonus , at the end of the shower, the Mum to be will now have a fantastic list of names to choose from.
Baby Names race game
If you are having prizes for the game winners I would suggest keeping them simple and something anyone can use - nail polish, candles and oil diffusers worked well for us. We just added little gift tags.
Baby Shower prizes
Another great activity is a Photo Booth. It is lots of fun and a great ice breaker for guests that may not know each other. For our baby shower we chose a Dr Seuss themed photo booth. We used simple paper chains hung from a railing for the back drop but you could also use a sheet, or streamers or a poster. Then you can buy or make your own props. I found a great website with all of the Dr Seuss props available to print at home. Then we just laminated and added a chopstick for the handle.
Photo Booth props
For the buffet table decorations, we used flowers and bunting. We also used hanging paper flowers as well as children's books on display in the room.
If you want to take the theme to the next level you could even do themed party food - such as a Very Hungry Caterpillar fruit skewer or Green Eggs and Ham quiches!
It is lots of fun planning an event like this and hopefully you will create a memorable & fun baby shower for the Mum to be.
Dr Seuss photo booth
