Baby Shower on a Budget!

I’d never been a part of planning a baby shower before, so when I was recently asked to help with decorations for one, I turned to Pinterest for inspiration. Pinterest is great for party planning, as you can make a “secret board” that only people you invite can see. This way, I could pin inspiration to “Traci’s Baby Shower”, invite the people who were helping plan the shower and then Traci (who follows me on Pinterest), would not be able to see what we were planning. It’s brilliant and so helpful. I’ve made the board public now, since the event is over, if anyone wants to take a look. My friend, Val, and I then had a decorating party and cranked out most of the favors and decorations in one evening.

The party favors we ended up making were inspired by a post by Jen of the blog, Scissors and Spatulas. Her recipe for popcorn, with M&Ms, that is coated with white chocolate, was to die for. Matt was even able to find M&Ms in blue and green (the colors we picked for the shower). I used regular salted popcorn, with light butter, and I loved the salty and sweet of the popcorn and the white chocolate. It was a big hit and I received many compliments on it. I even got to take one home and I could not stop eating it. It’s addictive. I need another reason to make this again!

I knew I had a limited budget for this, so I really wanted to try to use materials I already had on hand. Someone had given me a couple dozen mason jars from a wedding, so rather than buy or make containers for the popcorn, I figured I could just re-use the mason jars! I used scrap fabric to cover the top (cut with my pinking shears), and twine I already had, to tie them on. I designed a quick label in photoshop and printed them out on my Avery Kraft Brown labels (that I usually use as canning labels). Easy peezy!

Tissue paper pom-poms seem to be an easy, go-to party decoration, as I came across a lot of those of Pinterest. This was the best tissue paper pom-pom tutorial I found and the one we used.

Val had made these before, so I followed her lead. I had also seen a tip on Pinterest to buy things like tissue paper, plasticware and tablecloths at the dollar store. That proved to be a great tip, as I did buy a lot of those things there, but the tissue paper from the dollar store was quite rigid, and hard to form. Our pom-poms ended up looking more like flowers, so instead of hanging them, we used them as table settings. They weren’t totally a “Pinterest Fail“, but if I ever make them again, I will splurge on better, softer tissue paper.

I was able to find the rest of what I needed at Packaging Specialties. I love that store. They have everything, in every color theme you could want. I got blue and green tags, so people could write little messages for the baby. The clothes pins came from the dollar store and the twine I already had.

Our friend Colleen made an impressive and delicious spread of finger food and I made the labels for them. The labels also came from Packaging Specialties. A template can be downloaded from their website, so you can put them through your printer. They also had cool striped straws in a bunch of different colors. I just used a hole punch to punch a couple of holes in them and affixed the flags to the straws that way.

I had to figure out a way to stand the flags up, so I just filled some half-pint mason jars with beans and stood them up that way. Again, more stuff I already had on hand. Mason jars really are good for everything!

Mmm. The food was so good. Bravo, Colleen!

Val and Flower also brought some party games. Val brought “Baby Head Cornhole”, which is essentially the bean bag toss game, but with baby doll heads. Nice job, Val.

Flower did the game where you melt candy bars in diapers and then make people sniff them to guess what candy bar it is. This is one of my favorite baby shower games, because it’s funny and kind of gross!

I loved seeing Matt and Traci’s grandmother (Mom-mom), sticking her nose in one and so did their mom apparently!

I had a lot of fun being part of decorating for this shower and think the shower as a whole turned out great. I’m also glad I could score some “sister-in-law” and “auntie” points while I was at it. Now I’m just looking forward to meeting this little dude very soon!