Baby Shower Games-Simple and Hilarious

Shower games are always hard.  You don't want to be lame or cheesy or make anyone feel weird (or be forced to eat baby food) so it can get tough depending on who is attending the shower and what the mother-to-be likes.

Mrs. Curly J aka the Brayer was in charge of games for the shower.  She decided to go simple and hilarious.

Our simple game involved guessing how many bookworms (to go with the Book Theme) were in a jar.  Curly T, below, actually tied as one of the winners.  She won the bookworms.  The other winner got a Target gift card.  (PS-Hobie did not grow by 20 billion times.  That is my friend's dog Barkley, Hobie's Wise Old Man friend)

The second game was Baby Shower Bingo that we played while Beezus5 was opening her presents.  Each person filled out a Bingo card with baby related items that we thought B5 would get.  When she opened one of the items, we got to mark them off our card until someone got Bingo.  It was fun/hard to come up with 25 baby items if you are not used to babies.  My mom had no idea of the plethora of breast feeding supplies that are out there today.

The hilarious part came courtesy of the free space on the card.  We decided that although this was a girls only event, the Dad should be present in some way.  So Mr. Curly J did some photo shopping (or something) to create a baby version of the Dad to be, E.

I died laughing when J first emailed me the 'free space' pictures.   Fortunately, I don't think E reads my blog and therefore won't see that I posted this pic on the interweb.

Luckily, I think most people found this funny and not totally disturbing. 

Good job on games, Brayer!

What do you guys think?

Baby Shower Craft Hour-Alphabet Book

This weekend, my friends and I had a baby shower for Beezus5 who is having a baby in January-ish.  I think that the most important thing about party planning is trying to make it personalized to the individual.  Beezus5 likes reading so we had a book themed baby shower (with some owls and Harry Potter and Fall stuff thrown in there too).

I kind of like making stuff, so I thought it would be fun to force people to make a craft at the baby shower.  We made an alphabet book for B5 and her baby that also doubled as a guest book so one day mini B5 will know who came to her mom's baby shower.

I bought a photo album and made a page for each letter of the alphabet (by adding alphabet sticker).  Then we had each person draw or color a page and sign the back.  I was concerned that some people would not want to draw (or think they were not good enough at drawing) so I found some alphabet pictures at the Dollar Tree that people could just color if they did not want to draw.

Shanzie and my mom were so excited to be getting their craft on...

This ended up working much better than I thought it would.  I have come to realize recently that not everyone loves crafting or making stuff as much as me, but everyone at the shower willingly participated in this craft.   Some of the drawings were realllllly awesome (not my drawing of a jar of jam per se)...

Have you ever been to a baby shower where you had to make a craft?

Don't you wish you had your own ABC book?

Evolution of a Baby Shower Invite

When my friend, Beezus5, told me she was pregnant, I was obviously excited for her to have a baby and start a family and stuff but I was pretty much equally as excited about planning a baby shower.  I knew from the start that I wanted to make the invitations.  Somehow.  I'm not a pro, nor do I have any special software.  Also, I've never actually made invitations before.  But after some trial and error I was able to make something that I deemed acceptable and something I think she liked.  I used colored pencils, paper, a scanner, a computer, Microsoft Paint, Picasa, a printer and my trusty paper cutter.

B5 likes the following things....orange, green, books, owls and Harry Potter, so I tried to incorporate those into the invite (which also goes with the theme of the shower which we can discuss later).  She also likes Christian Bale, Pearl Jam and Liver Pudding but I didn't really know how to work those in.

I started by trying to 'draw' something in Microsoft Paint.  I didn't really like those that much.

Then I made a sketch and scanned it onto my computer.  This seemed like something I could work with.  The sketches started out very rough and evolved over time.

Finally I used colored pencils to draw this.

Then I scanned it on to my computer and saved it in the highest resolution I could.  I opened it up in Picasa and added text with all the shower info.  I printed it out (using the high quality photo setting) onto card stock from Michaels and trimmed them up with my paper cutter.

And here's the final product (ok I altered the text a bit).

And here's a picture of it on my fridge so I remember to go and stuff.

What do you think?

Should I have used pastel colors to be more babyshowerriffic?

Have you ever made your own invitations?

Would you read 'Hedwig Flies Again' if it were a real book?

Baby Shower Cookies

I was going to use my fancy cookie press to make cookies for my college roomie's baby shower.  But instead I was perusing my local Sur La Table and found these cookie cutters in the shape of bottles and baby carriages.  So I decided to get those instead.

My first round of cookies came out looking a little like blobs instead of baby bottles or carriages.  But once I used my fast drying cookie icing they started to look a little more like bottles.  The carriages never really looked like carriages so I just decided to focus on the bottles.  Obviously I'm not the best at cookie decoration but they came out pretty good.  I mean, people could at least tell what they were.

There was also a tasty cake and a bunch of other food that we made.  Overall it was a good time.  I'm not good at baby games though.  We had to smell baby foods and write down what we thought it was.  I wrote down pears when it was actually green beans.  And I put down apricots when it was actually carrots.  Oh well.  I'm excited to meet Baby Wunka!

I participated in the group gift (see above) which was something called a Pack n' Play.  But I also bought her a book, Goodnight Moon.  I remember it from when I was a kid.  My other top choices were The Little Engine that Could, The Giving Tree and Are You My Mother.

Can you tell that those cookies are supposed to be bottles?
Do you know what a Pack N' Play is?
Do you know what baby green beans smell like?
What's your favorite children's book?