Vintage meets "About to POP" babyshower

Planning for a baby shower can be overwhelming but so much fun! Here are my tips for baby shower planning. 

Oh and let me add that I did this not alone, but with the help of a new found friend and creative partner, Patti.  Without her creativity and sheer cuteness.. the baby shower would not have sparkled quite as much! Recruit help, it really is much more fun!


 1. Getting Started:

Pick a date!  I started planning the shower about 4 months before and believe me it helps to have plenty of time.

2. Pick a theme: 

Oh my! Picking a theme can be the hardest part, only because there are so many great ideas and themes out there.  I suggest picking a theme you like but tweaking it to fit the baby shower mommas personality. Remember it's really all about her and that new little baby, so pick something that reflects them.

Our theme: She's about to POP! - this theme is fun but is open to a huge range of ways your can take it.  It may seem a little, I don't know, tacky but depending on how you run with it, it can be cute and fun!

Great blogs to get you started with She's about to POP! theme:

• dimplePRINTS- more of a POP art theme but some great display ideas
• Holy Craft- fun ways to do a POP theme
• Lady Behind The Curtain- great food ideas and cute displays
• Pinterest- About to POP! overload and so great!

3. Pick a style & colors:

Pick a style to go with that fabulous theme!  Some About to POP! baby showers went with traditional birthday party style showers and some went with POP art styles, but we wanted to make it special so we went VINTAGE!

Vintage is a great way to go because things can be mixed and matched, old and new, but have a overall feeling of just romantic and special.  Another reason we chose vintage is because our dear friend Stef (baby shower mamma) chose not to know the sex of her baby until the delivery, so we had to plan a gender neutral baby shower.  Vintage pinks and blues worked well with our style and made it oh so perfect!

4.  Pick a location:

If you can have your baby shower in a home then that is perfect to give that comfy vibe, but we were hosting over thirty people and needed a larger space. We found a great place in Springfield called Big Momma's coffee house and you can rent the "back porch", which is a perfect place to host any event.  I am so glad I found it and how fitting for a baby shower than to have it at a place called Big Momma's!!  It only cost $75 dollars for 2 hours of rental and honestly Joe, the manager, is such a delight to deal with.  He let us really stay for much longer and was always so easy to work with! 

So much space on momma's "back porch"

Big Momma's coffee house has great lunch specials, awesome food, and some terrific coffee!!













5. Find the invite:

Invites can be expensive and it is not hard, if you are creative enough, to make your own for very little money! I did try my hand at a few handmade creations but when it comes to things like this, I obsess and have to have it perfect.  I was never fully satisfied with what I created, so I found myself at Vistaprint. Vistaprint has hundreds of invites and there are so many adorable invites that are really inexpensive and some are even free! 

I chose my invite from there because the toile pattern that I found was extremely similar to the fabric that is being used in the baby shower mommas nursery and fits the vintage criteria!

The invite was printed on thick linen paper and Vistaprint allows you to edit, changing the colors to what you desire. 

- The insert:  We needed to add a insert because the baby shower was a surprise and I added where she was registered.  The insert is pink tissue paper that I printed directly on my home printer.

Printing on Tissue paper tutorial

*GOOD IDEA ALERT!!

- Back of the invite:  Most new mommas don't have their nursery library established yet, so we asked guests to bring a children's book instead of a card.  Here is a cute poem to do just that. Needless to say, Stef's nursery library is now overflowing!

Although cards are nice with their sentiment and prayer,

they're read once or twice then tucked away with care.

A book is a treasure, words and pictures unite, 

read over and over to teach and delight.

So instead of a card for baby and mother, please give a children's book

with your thoughts written inside the cover.

Your book will be cherished; God will watch from above, 

when it's read they'll remember your kindness and love.

6. Plan the menu:

We chose hours between 2-4 so we could serve simple and fun desserts. Sticking to our theme She's about to POP! we chose POP like foods.

• Fruit Skewers
• Popcorn (butter & toffee)
• Cake pops
• Homemade pop tarts
• Lemon Cloud push ups
• Sausage balls
• Chocolate Chip dip with Teddy grahams
• Veggies & Ranch
• Fruit Tea

7. Favors:

To say thanks for "popping by" we stayed with our POP theme and had a candy bar.  It was so fun and everyone was excited to load up a bag of goodies to take with them.
 

 Lollipop cookies were made by Decorative Dough.  They are out of Texas and they shipped our cookies to us.  They were fresh and perfect. Not one broken cookie! Highly recommend for your cookie needs.

 All things that pop! Putting candy in beautiful glass jars gave our candy bar a vintage, pretty look.

 A easy D.I.Y sign sent the perfect message to our guests. Decorative scrapbook paper stuck to sticks and stuck in an old painted pain can!

 Marshmallow pops! So amazing and easy. Marshmallows dipped in almond bark and topped with sprinkles!





I forgot to take a picture of our baggies that guests used to fill up on "things that pop" but they were cute small brown paper sacks and I glued a small pink ribbon to the top with a message that said "You're sweet for popping by".

8. Love is in the Details: 

Our baby shower was a little more of a celebration and fun gathering than it was a traditional baby shower.  We left out the "smell the diaper" and "how many toilet paper squres is she" games and went with some more clever and maybe traditional but cute ideas. 

Baby Scattegories :  Give your guests 45 seconds to fill out the blanks.  Answers are always fun to share! Instead of just printing it out on paper, I used brown paper bags from the grocery store.

Cut your paper sac to the 8.5x11 size (printer paper size) and print like you would any thing else! It really went well with our vintage theme! 

At Scribd get a free Baby Scattegories printable 

Help pick a baby name:

 

Remember the cootie catchers back in the day?  Well here is a fun conversation starter or activity to get your guests talking.  Inside I listed Stef's top 8 baby names and then on the inside, wrote out what each baby name meant.  We asked several guests which name they loved and they shared their reasons why.  It was a clever and "vintage" way to share names that Stef loved with her guests.  I printed several on different scrapbook papers! So unique!

At Ruffled you can get a free Cootie Catcher template  

                                                             

Welcome table w/ empty old jar to have gusts sign in (used this for drawing)

 

Wishes for Baby:  Instead of having guests give advice, we all know new mothers are bombarded with advice from the experienced, we thought having wishes for baby would be much sweeter.  At each place setting we had our tags for guests to write their wish for the new baby.  Then they took their wish and tied it to the tree that was set up on our welcome table.

Centerpieces & Giveaways:

To decorate our tables we made our prizes/giveaways the centerpiece.  Sadly I didn't get any pictures of the tables (I didn't find my camera until the baby shower was halfway over, but I did take some pics of the giveaways.)

We made Dum Dum trees and we also made marshmallow pop centerpieces 

These Dum Dum trees are so simple [Foam balls and clay pots] but it does take a whole lot of suckers to make these.  I don't have every tree that I made in this picture but overall I used 1000 Dum Dums.

D.I.Y Welcome Sign:

I had been buying loose pink & blue scrapbook paper over my planning period and had so much that I was able to use it for great projects for the baby shower.  This was one of those projects. This was on the welcome table as guests came in.