Last Minute Baby Shower

My friend Tiffany left the country on Friday morning to return to the US and her 2^nd baby is due in September, so on Wednesday afternoon we threw her a baby shower and good bye party. She was out of town the entire week before and only had very limited time available for us to do this, so we didn’t even know we could until Sunday afternoon. So I had 2 ½ days to plan and implement the party on an EXTREMEMLY limited budget. It was so super fun! I wanted to share some of my ideas and how we pulled it off.

For the goodbye part of the shower I made a scrap book using cards that I had made from a kit. I bought the kit at Target one time when I was in the states at the 1 spot and it made 8 cards. A FANTASTIC deal. I then went to a scrapbook store and bought the paper that matched and some sticker embelishments as well as a scrapbook to put them all in. It was very inexpensive and I put one card per page as well as a space to journal and a photo. Each guest came in and secretly wrote in a card in the journal. I took pictures at the shower of everyone and I will send those to her so she can print them and just stick them in the scrapbook. She was very surprised and it was fun watching her look through each of the pages. Gonna show some pictures of the scrapbook when I get some. Forgot to take them! :(

For the baby gift, I had to get creative. I didn't have time to really shop around for her and I wanted to give her something special. I had some burp cloths (prefold diapers) that I had dyed red and yellow. I took those and found some coordinating flannels and accent fabric that I already had and embellished the burp cloths with some fun designs. I am going to make a couple of more of those and I will post a tutorial here. It took a couple of hours in all, but so worth it! They came out really cute.

For games I took several of GirlM's baby dolls and some newborn cloth diapers that I had and we played pin the diaper on the baby. It was hilarious! The women had to first work in teams and then individually to see who could pin the diaper on the baby the fastest w/o it falling off or actually pinning the diaper TO the baby. Then we played "what's in the diaper bag" where I filled the diaper bag in front of the ladies with all the things that a baby needs when you leave the house. We had around 15 items and then I gave each person a piece of paper for them to try to remember everything that I had put in the bag. It was fun. There were enough mommies there to fill me in on the things I forgot to include!

We don't know the sex of the baby so the cake and all the decorations had to be unisex. I looked and looked at the walmart for some toy or something that I could use as a cake topper and coudn't find a thing, so I settled on this green bow. I just cleaned off the bottom part really well and then just stuck it on the top.

We did the following for decorations:

A few flower arrangements, some confetti on the table, some color coordinating dishes.

I used a couple of GirlM's doll diapers (plastic) and stuffed them with some tissue paper and hydrangeas from my back yard.

I used some of the bouganvilia from my front yard to weave in and out of this plate from Southern Living at Home and wrote a little note on it. I didn't have any cute ribbon, so I made do.

I hung up some twine over our entry to our Living room like a clothes line and hung up some of GirlM's doll clothes with some little clothes pins that I had already. Instant baby decorations!

We also put up balloons with ribbon all over the place. Balloons are big here.

Just another shot of the table. Some of the food is missing from this picture, but you get the idea.

We used facebook for invites so we could put this together so fast so I made an invitation just for Tiffany as a keepsake.

For food we went simple. We made chicken vegetable tostadas, we had fruit salad with a yogurt/mayo dressing, we had some mixed nuts, and cake. And a Guatemalan punch called Rosa de Jamaica (hibiscus tea). Oh, and a bowl of chocolates.

For party favors I just bought some tiny gift bags and stuck some chocolate goodies inside.

Anyway, it was a ton of fun and a good memory for Tiffany. All in all I spent (on food, gifts, flowers, decorations, favors, scrapbook, everything) around $80. If you were hosting a shower like this with others, it could be even less expensive. Hope this gives you some ideas. It was really a fun time.