hello kitty baby shower = success

First and foremost – the baby shower was a complete success! After months of preparation and some last minute scrambling, it really came together beautifully on the day of the party. Now I could go on and on about how wonderful the day was but what I actually want to do is talk about what we did. Invitations, decorations, games! All of that good stuff. I had never thrown a baby shower before and for anyone who has, you know it’s a lot of work. Luckily, there were four of us, which only made the planning more enjoyable, not to mention easier.

So for anyone who’s thinking about throwing a baby shower or just enjoys DIY-type projects, this is a must-read for you! Prepare yourself for a long (but worthwhile) entry ahead.

Theme

We immediately knew that we didn’t want a generic theme for the shower (no offense to those who just use the baby shower aisle at Party City; their stuff is cute too!). We really wanted to choose a theme that catered to what Maida (the mother-to-be) likes. It not only adds a personal touch but I think it makes it that much more fun in general. In this case, the perfect theme was Hello Kitty. (By the way, this is a baby shower theme I’d like for myself in the far, far future. So friends, take notes! Seriously.)

Invitations

This was one of the many things I was in charge of. Initially I thought – Hello Kitty is popular, how hard could it be to find invitations? Um, next to impossible! Most Hello Kitty themed invitations were for children’s parties and/or came in small batches that I would need to order from eBay. In the end, I made each invitation by hand using scrapbook paper, computer printouts and other goodies from a local stationery store.

Prior to sending out the invitations, we signed her up for a baby registry filled with the items we thought she’d need/like and I also made thank you cards for her to use post-party.

Decorations

1. General – Thankfully Party City carried all the typical decorations one would expect like balloons, confetti, dangling cutouts and patterned table cloths (all Hello Kitty themed!)
2. Center pieces – We found cute pink & blue vases from the dollar store and added 1 Hello Kitty balloon plus 3 lollipops (heart, star and flower shaped) to each one.
3. Guestbook – I found these great instant photo guestbooks from Adesso Albums that I loved. The pages have slots for photos so I went around to each table, took their picture and asked them to sign around it. Guestbook AND photo album all in one!
   
   
   

Food / Desserts

Food was easy enough. We ordered everything from a Filipino restaurant that does catering and then some friends/family “donated” additional desserts and appetizers. The cake is where it got a little tricky. I came up with the great idea of doing tiers of cupcakes with a small round cake at the top. And of course I had to make it even more difficult by suggesting that we decorate a portion of the cupcakes with Hello Kitty faces. This was all before I realized what the next question would be – “you’ll just bake red velvet cupcakes and decorate them then, right?” Oh crap.

Aside from the actual cupcakes, one of the other girls found cupcaketree.com – a site that sells cardboard cupcake stands that you can decorate and assemble yourself. So.. an assembled stand, wrapping paper, ribbons, 4 batches of cupcakes, fondant, icing, decorating gel and a store bought cake produced the following:

A lot of people asked me if I bought the Hello Kitty faces but I did not! We had cookie cutters and fondant for the shape of the faces and then I used decorating gel to draw on the eyes, nose and bow.

Games

My cousin was in charge of coming up with and running all the games at the party. She did such a great job! We had a total of eight games and used plates full of brownies as prizes.

1. Design a onesie – This is a team (by table) project where you hand out plain white onesies for them to design with decorative t-shirt paints. Once everyone is finished, the mother-to-be picks her favorite (the winner) and gets to keep all the onesies to use later.
2. Guess Mom’s Tummy Size – Each person cuts a piece of the yarn/ribbon to the size they believe would fit perfectly around the mother-to-be’s pregnant tummy. After everyone cuts their string, they compared the results to her actual tummy. The one who’s closest wins.
3. Guess The Gerber’s – Take the labels off of the baby food jars (we had 6) and guess the food by tasting each one.
4. Mother, Mother, Who Am I – List of riddles in which participants have to guess the famous mother (ie. Q: Mother of Jesus. A: Mary)
5. Feed The Baby – This game is for two person teams. One person is given a bib and the other person a spoon and baby food. The person with the food must feed the “baby” (aka their teammate) blindfolded! The first team to finish the jar wins.
6. Memory Game – As part of the decorations, we hung a clothesline of different baby items (mittens, onesies, rattle, etc) and took it down halfway through the party. We then asked each person to write down all the items they remembered and the one with the most on their list won.
7. Raffle – One of the girls acted as the “receptionist” for the party. She sat at the entrance of the venue and as each person/family arrived, we asked them to write down their address on an envelope. This served two purposes: to be later used for sending out thank you cards and as a raffle game. All the envelopes were placed in a basket and at the end of the party, the mother-to-be picked out an envelope to be the winner.
8. Baby Advice – Not exactly a game but we had a vase, paper and pens set up in the middle of the room. We asked everyone to write down some advice and place it in the vase. (A lot of our visitors wrote down their numbers and told Maida to call them anytime haha.)

I should note that my two favorite games were “Feed the Baby” and “Guess Mom’s Tummy Size”. Why? Because for “Feed the Baby” we had actual couples (boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife) teams and all the guys had to be the “baby”. And for the latter, my cousin John won by measuring his own tummy first. Fun times.

Party Favors

And finally, party favors! Obviously not everyone has this luxury but we happened to know someone in the Philippines who puts together Hello Kitty party favors. Talk about perfect, right? We told her what we wanted and were able to get it for cheaper (since it’s cheaper in the Philippines). In the end, we had a collection of Hello Kitty pens, lanyards (for IDs), luggage tags and pez (this we ordered through Amazon in bulk) to hand out to all our female guests and children.

the end!

I think that covers everything. It probably seems a bit overwhelming with all that we did but honestly, seeing the results of all our efforts was so rewarding. The mother-to-be was blown away, the guests kept telling us that we did a great job and we all just had a lot of fun. I’ll be posting pictures soon, once I collect them from everyone. But in the meantime..

Please get some ideas, enjoy the pics and share suggestions :)