Organizing a Storybook Baby Shower

Happy Tuesday! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend. The weather in our neck of the woods was perfect. We enjoyed some baseball, some time on the river, and lots of quality time with friends and family. 

Speaking of family, my cousin is expecting a baby girl any day now! A few weeks ago, we put together a shower to celebrate. For some people, event planning comes naturally. For the rest of us, it's a lot of work! So I thought it'd be fun to share some of the tips and tricks I used to put this girly shower together!

To start, I put together a list of all of the main items that needed to be decided on:

• Date & Time
• Location
• Guest List
• Theme
• Invitations
• Food & Drinks
• Games
• Prizes
• Party Favors
• Decor
• Thank You notes

To settle on a date and time, we started by checking with the guest of honor to see what days would work for her. Once we had a few days to pick from, we chose one that the five of us hosts could all attend. 

To choose the location, we looked around at some different options including hosting it at one of our homes, a local restaurant, a church, or another facility. It's important when considering an outside facility to ask about reservation costs, cleaning fees, etc so there are no surprises at the end of your event. We decided on our church because it was free to use the facility and, since they have a fully furnished kitchen, we wouldn't need to bring dishes, platters, silverware, etc. It worked out perfect.

Putting together the guest list isn't always an easy task. We considered who had already been invited to previous showers and how far out into our extended family we wanted to go. For a baby shower, be sure to consider the mommy-to-be's mother and grandmothers, aunts, cousins, siblings, and close friends just to name a few. We settled on a pretty small list of 25. 

Once we knew the when, where, and who it was time to start the fun planning. Since my cousin had four other showers already, these soon-to-be-parents were quickly overwhelmed with a plethora of gifts. Now, when you're having your first child, too many goodies to get started doesn't sound like a bad thing - but it can certainly be overwhelming. To help contain the craziness, I proposed a book shower in which each guest would be requested to bring a book for the new baby. Our hope was to start a library for this baby girl so that she'd be set on books for awhile. 

The book shower idea also set the theme for the shower: A storybook shower. Our invitations, food and drink selections, games, and prizes all revolved around the idea of books.

Our invites were a simple book shape and the inside held all the details about the shower and a cute note about the request to bring a book:

Our food menu was as follows: 

Ham Sandwiches & Deviled Eggs 
Green Eggs and Ham

Meatballs 
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Veggies 
Peter Rabbit

Fruit Skewers 
The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Goldfish
One Fish, Two Fish

Cookies 
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

Raspberry Pink Lemonade Punch 
Pinkalicious

We purchased the corresponding books and displayed them by each food item. The variety created a nice spread for a filling and delicious lunch.

After lunch, we played a short game called Name That Storybook, which I discovered here. Each item was a line from a popular children's book and our guests had to guess the title of the book. Our winner had 11 out of 12 correct! Our prize for the game winner stayed in the book theme and was a nice journal with some matching pens, sticky notes, and some chocolates. (Because it's perfect to eat chocolate while reading, journaling, or doing any other activity for that matter.)

When the game winner gets a prize, our guest of honor gets a prize too so we gifted our mom-to-be with a book titled "To My Daughter". It's a book that mom will fill out all about herself and her experience being a mom and can later gift to her daughter as a keepsake. 

Each of our guests also got a party favor. I colored some Hershey chocolate bars to say the word "her" or "she" in pink. (Hint: If you're having a boy shower, you can color in "he" or if you're having a gender reveal party, you can color "he" in blue and "she" in pink!) On the back of each bar was a cute thank you poem I found here.

Our decor was pretty simple. We bought coordinating tablecloths in pink, yellow, and white. Each guest table had a pink or yellow mum in the middle with a dish of mints and a dish of chocolate candies to snack on. Since the food table was covered with food and books, we left the decor to just the colorful tablecloth. And the gift table was covered in pretty pastel wrapped gifts, so it was beautiful on its own.

We provided our mom-to-be with a set of thank you notes that she could send out following the shower and had each guest fill out a stamped envelope with their address so mom wouldn't have to dig up addresses later. We think she has enough to do! We also provided each of our guests an index card in which they could write some parenting advice, a note to baby, etc and we collected those into a cute baby girl photo album for mom to take home. 

All in all, the shower was a great success. Everyone loved the theme, the decor, and the gifts. And our guests didn't disappoint! This little girl will be able to open her own library for all the other babies in the neighborhood! 

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