Monday, January 27, 2014

Children's Literature Themed Baby Shower

To be fair, I'll tell you right upfront that I was on Pinterest almost every day for a week trying to find ideas. I really wanted every aspect of this shower to have literature thrown up on it. My friend Emily, whom I adore to bits, is an English major and she absolutely adores everything about children's literature. Plus we became fast friends over our love of books so it's only fitting that this is the shower I would give her.

Let's start with the Harry Potter themed diaper cake that was the one thing I knew I absolutely HAD to have at the shower.
I got the hat, scarf, booties, bibs and wand from Etsy. All different shops, all had to be on this cake. I found an image of the Hogwarts crest, printed that off to be in the front on the bottom tier. Also tucked in next to the hat is a platform 9 3/4 ticket. I've made diaper cakes before but this one is probably my absolute favorite.

One idea I found on Pinterest was to have literature quotes all over the party area in frames. I found a bunch of cute frames on clearance at Target that I was going to use for my office, but they worked here too.
Another book I pulled from was Alice in Wonderland. I mean, how could you not? I really want to do an Alice themed party sometime.. we'll have to cook something up. But for favors, I found mini bottles of water and put a really great Alice and Cheshire quote on them and made "drink me" tags. Also put Skittles in tulle circles (because Emily is not a chocolate fan) and made an "eat me" tag.
 So when you came in, you saw the diaper cake and the favors, along with some quotes, my Alice in Wonderland book, and the third book in the Harry Potter series opened up to the chapter "Flight of the Fat Lady" which was kind of funny because Emily is the smallest 7 month pregnant person I have ever seen.
I even stayed up the night before to make her lemon cupcakes with American butter cream frosting to go with my If You Give a Cat a Cupcake area. 
 And a few mini cupcakes for good measure.
Each table had a book in the middle with a few things. So this was The Little Engine That Could, but I also had a Knuffle Bunny, The Day the Crayons Quit, and Here We Go, Harry on tables. Instead of using table cloths, I use receiving blankets that the mom to be can take home.
 We didn't have a full lunch, but we had snack things.
 So we had meatballs (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs), popcorn (Popcorn Poems), pasta salad (Strega Nona), fruit tray with pickles (The Hungry Caterpillar), cheese/crackers (The Stinky Cheese Man & Other Fairly  Stupid Tales), and we had blue punch and put some rubber ducks in it for Ten Little Rubber Ducks.

 I had asked everyone to bring a book instead of a card, which is far more practical. People throw cards away, they love books for a long time. So then I found one of my very favorite quotes, "Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them" by Lemony Snicket. So clearly, that went on the gift table.
We had a "price is right" themed game where people had to guess the price on a few baby things. I made it with a Doctor Seuss theme to it.
Then I filled the table with our favorites, with some characters we had.
Oh yes, and then I had guests write either a piece of parenting advice for the parents to be or something funny for when they get peed on at 2 a.m. when they aren't fully awake., using the concept of Harold and the Purple Crayon. Also amazes me how many people haven't written that book. It's kind of great and it's a far better lesson than something like The Giving Tree. I fucking hate that book. At least with Harold, he figures life out for himself and takes life by the balls. Whereas in The Giving Tree, the character is incredibly selfish and dependent on everyone else. *end rant*

But you can see the fun urine fact I left her to get people started. She'll know who that came from without question.
We also measured her belly. Which was adorable because she is like the perfect pregnant person.
Overall it was a great party. I am so glad she let me give her a party, I'm so glad she's pregnant because YAY BABIES, and I'm so glad she's my friend. Emily is easily the most carefree, upbeat, positive person I have ever known and it just makes her amazing. She is going to be an amazing mom and I can't wait to snuggle her baby. I may or may not have already offered to spend an entire weekend letting them sleep so I could get my baby fix. Here's hoping that 48 hours of screaming, fussing, very needy infant will cure my uterus down.
Otherwise Matt is basically screwed. :)

7 comments:

Unknown said...

That looks AMAZING! Great job! I was also thrown a literature/library baby shower, and my boy's bookshelf is so full of wonderful books. As a recipient, I can tell you this was an absolutely awesome thing to do for your friend and her baby.

Julie H said...

Ah it's all so cute! I'm a little bit sad I backed out of doing my sil's twins shower but I'm on overload.

Shooting Stars Mag said...

Oh wow, what a fun party! I love this idea for a baby shower. I think this has to be my theme whenever I have a kid. love themed parties in general though. :)

Steff said...

I can only hope someone would give me such an awesome baby shower when I have one!

Kattrina said...

That is awesome! I love how the food and favors were all tied to books - you are so clever. And I LOVE Strega Nona - best books ever. I also love The Giving Tree and as a child found it so sad that the tree gave and gave and got nothing back. I haven't read the purple crayon book so I'll have to look for that one. And seriously - Harry Potter diaper cake? Completely awesome.

Health is Wealth said...

I hope someone would give me such baby shower. Thanks for sharing. http://www.quoteschart.com

Unknown said...

This is wonderful! A great idea for my writer friend, whose baby shower we’ve planned in one of the San Francisco venues. We were actually planning on giving her a frozen themed party, but I think now I’m thinking this is a great idea as well.