How to Hold an Awesome Baby Shower

Perhaps the actual title of this post should be “Why my baby shower was awesome.” Basically, I wouldn’t change anything about my baby shower, organized mostly by my lovely sister-in-law to be, Kirsten, over at Breaking Bland Eats.

I confess that I also played a heavy hand in the Baby Shower planning and preparation: I didn’t want a surprise, and I also didn’t want Kirsten to do all the work. She did a lot of Googling for shower ideas, and she ran them by me. Because I live in Montreal and my entire family and a large chunk of my friends are in the Lower Mainland of BC, my baby shower was also a moment to reconnect and celebrate my pregnancy while on the west coast, which made it extra special.

Here are the fun things we did that made my Baby Shower such a wonderful experience for me, and also entertaining for the guests!

We had a theme:

I was really obsessed with all things owl while I was pregnant, and chose a lot of owl-inspired items for the nursery. I was a big fan of the Dwell Studios Owl design, so my Aunt had a local cupcake shop do some Dwell-inspired cupcake toppers. Since I was having a boy, my school-aged cousins made the letters to spell out “About a Boy” to go up on the wall.

We had some simple, non-annoying games:

What I liked about the first two games was that they gave guests something to do when they first arrived and got them all chatting with each other, even if they were meeting for the first time. My younger cousins led guests to the games and got them started! Obviously as the pregnant Mama, you’re the centre of attention, but you can only chat with a couple guests at a time. Having these games set up totally took the pressure off.

Guess the pregnant belly circumference: A great icebreaker as guests hovered around the sheet and checked out each other’s guesses, and eyed up my belly from afar.

Guess the baby food: Also a great ice breaker, guests wrote down their guesses for the three flavours of baby food. (The guest closest to being a baby won… she was 9.)

We also played a Baby Facts Trivia game created by Kirsten. She put together 20 baby-related questions, and in pairs, guests tried to write down the correct answers.

We had these simple, inexpensive prizes for the winners of the belly circumference and baby food guessing games!

We had yummy party favours:

To thank all the guests for coming out, Kirsten made caramel corn and we made our own little gift bags for it.

The highlight of my shower was that Kirsten made this:

Yes, that’s right: it’s a Fruit Salad Baby. Kirsten carved out a watermelon to make the bassinet, used a canteloupe for the head and toothpicks to secure the eyes, nose and mouth. It was edible and amazing!

Basic pointers:

• Share the labour with loved ones: Delegate various shower tasks to willing family and friends. In my case, my younger cousins were happy to be included in the preparations by making the “About a Boy” sign. My aunt was in charge of cupcakes, Kirsten took care of the games and we worked together on the party favours. The morning of, I took care of the clean up while she was creating her fruit baby masterpiece. My Mom hosted the shower at her house.
• Keep it simple: A baby shower need not be expensive nor elaborate to be fun and memorable. If you hold it after lunch, you can provide finger food and dessert rather than a full meal. As you can see, our games were practically free and our party favours homemade.
• Keep track for thank yous: Showers aren’t just about gifts, but for most families they are an occasion to give the Mama-to-be some necessities. Have someone keep track of who gives you what, since Mommy Brain can make it really hard to remember which gift came from which guest.
• Send thank you cards quickly: Do your thank you cards while baby is still in your belly. Trust me.