Polka Dot Baby Shower

For weeks, I have been working on creating a most fabulous shower for my SIL. Since you really only get the serious showers for the first baby, I wanted to make sure it was perfect. I went with a theme of polka dots in the hope that she can use some of the decorations for the baby's room.

(Photos of most of the details and some of the fun.)

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Anyway, onto the how-to's and wheres.


The invitations were made by my multi-talented husband and the address labels are genius shared by my SIL Heidi.


The front door was nothing fancy. I just grabbed the set of lights usually adorning the mud room. A little something to emphasize this is the right house.


The living room decorations include a pom and Chinese lantern light fixture I built after being inspired over at Design*Sponge. I also found inspiration at The Purl Bee and created that dotted garland on the mantle. I fully intend to make another one for our Christmas tree next year. It was super easy even for a sewing novice like myself. The dots in the frames are just cut from paper and replaced the snowflakes I had up throughout January.








One of the things I did to tie parts of the shower together was to paint frames. I saw these adorable unpainted round frames at Michael's for maybe $2 each. I brought them home, painted them with acrylic paints, used a dot sponge and pen cap to add dots, and inserted the words "Eat, Drink, Gift, and Make". I figured Chelsea could put photos of Baby B (now known as Evelyn) in them later.

For food, I included a lot of guilty pleasures from whoopie pies to round candies to popcorn cones. Fruit skewers and cucumber sandwiches were also available. The cupcakes included a new frosting recipe that tasted like marshmallow cream and were decked out with supplies from Bake It Pretty. Over the food table hangs a "Keep Calm" print I thought every breastfeeding mother needs next to her nursing spot and mobiles I've always wanted to make after first seeing it in the now defunct (commence shedding tears) Martha Stewart Kids. (They were actually the deciding factor for the polka dot theme.)





The drink of choice was Cherry Limeade (here's the recipe) since the mom-to-be was regularly tweeting about needing a trip to Sonic. Again, the super husband whipped those together.


Not wanting to do a traditional baby shower game since most of the guests are not moms and since I don't really like them, I decided to go with my creativity strength and had the guests makes nursery artwork.

It was major success. From comments of, "We should do this for a department party," to "I'm taking notes for a baby shower I'm going to host," I think they had fun.

And last but certainly not least were the favors. They were pop-top cans filled with bath tablets. Here's the how-to from Crafts on a Whim for turning regular old fruit cans into a special, fun to open party favor. The red polka dot wraparound is just packing tape I picked up at Michael's over white paper and again, my husband played a major role in the assembly and label design.


That was it! I do have to say a big thanks to my sister-in-law, Heidi. She's the party hostess extraordinare. She's the one that hooked me up with tons of polka dot party ideas, introduced me to Bake It Pretty, Paper Source, and Luna Bazaar, all of which were indispensable for the perfect baby shower.


And of course, I must thank my husband who not only helped put it all together but also tolerates the freak-outs I tend to have as part of the planning process. He even lets me do it all again despite saying, "Never again," more times that I can count.


If you want to see all my inspiration sites and even some pondered but rejected baby shower ideas, check out my Delicious/babyshower. The links were hidden during the planning stages but are now viewable by anyone. Of course, if you were on Delicious, I could share lots of links with you. Why aren't you?