Baby Shower – DIY Style
by
Ronja Lotte
The tradition of a baby shower for a pregnant friend has reached Germany for some time now but for the first time in February I was part of the planning committee for a baby shower. Of course I promised to take care about the party decorations, along with the small snail*. For our party we rented a small art gallery in our neighbourhood. A bright and beautiful (and free) room, which was completely empty. Beside the decoration, there were also lots of things like dishes, cutlery, lamps etcetera, which we had to get. From the beginning it was clear that this would be a low budget party, so we rolled up our sleeves, threw our craft materials together and started brainstorming. In terms of style, we decided to go minimalistic with more than a touch of classic romance and in between we added splashes of blue with cream or grey**. Our pregnant friend was over the moon and now that her baby has also arrived she spreads happiness hormones around herself like there is no tomorrow. Whenever I have a bad day now, I go over to my friend´s house, sit beside her, hold the baby and immediately the world becomes pink and fluffy and safe.
* Faithful readers know the small snail as a busy commentator of each of my posts. I know the small snail as my oldest friend – partner in crime since 1989.
** At this point the small snail will roll her eyes, because my unwillingness to use lots of color drives her mad and I already know what she thinks of my “splashes” of grey and cream 
Let´s get started with the table and the large window. Under the tablecloths are three wooden boards on trestles and the hour I spent ironing the tablecloth was definitely the low point of the week (and it still had wrinkles afterwards). Unfortunately, I did not get a good picture of the shop window decoration because of light reflection but in this image you can see the window decoration quite well in the background. In two nights the small snail and I draw 60 onesies on paper and cut them out. The small snail sacrificed her collection of scrapbook papers and only twitched a bit, when I selected one sheet after another for the onesies. Very brave, small snail! The gluing of the onesies from both sides to the strings took me almost as long as the cutting out part. In order to create a visually pleasing sequence for the onesies, I´ve spread them all around me on the floor and sorted them into small piles and as soon as I was satisfied with one, my cat Mia would come sprinting from nowhere and would throw herself into the piles, again and again.
In all honesty, I could drown in vases, but since we wanted all vases to be the same, I plundered small snail´s and mine stock of mason jars and glass bottles and after a lot of scrubbing I managed to clean them all and beautified them with lace. When I chose the flowers, I kept to field flowers (or my idea of field flowers) and we´ve paid only 25 euros (about 26 USD) for three large bouquets and the six small bouquets on the window sill. Thanks for the discount, dear flower shop manager!
For me one of the most important things in every room is the lighting, party or no party, and for the evening we definitely wanted different small lightning sources for an indirect romantic light. For the table, I´ve put battery-powered small LED lights in mason jars and glued white fabric around the lower part of the jars so that the battery compartments wouldn´t be seen and a few glass candle holders were quickly decorated with Washi tape. On the window sill and everywhere else in the room, fairy lights completed the lighting arrangements for the baby shower.
As you can see, we also remained true to our color theme with this polka dot garland, which you cannot see in this photo is the size of the garland. This polka dot dream is more than two meters wide (about 7 feet) and covered nearly a whole wall. Overall, I´ve cut out 50 circles in three different sizes and glued them on two strings.
I have found the idea for our drinking glasses at another blog and at this blog you can also get a whole pack of cute wild animals as free templates (get the link at my blog). Each of the guests got their own forest animal and after the baby shower they were allowed to take their animal glasses home as a party gift.
There is no party without cake and the cake girls did a really great job! Not only did the cake taste delicious, the surprise effect when slicing it was of course particularly cool.
Since I have unfortunately inherited the awful doctor handwriting of my father, the small snail graciously agreed to take care of the chalk board, because every baby has to be welcomed to the world in style. Until now, I have not yet managed to wipe the board, because it is so cute. From now on the small snail is my official chalk board artist and I hope that she accepts to be paid with muffins.
So far I have only seen the idea to decorate the pregnant guest of honor with a belly sash in America, but we loved it instantly so the small snail quickly went through her nick-nacks and made this lovely belly sash. Is not everything better with flowers and feathers?
Wanna see all photos and more of my projects? Just visit my blog :-)
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
Comments
Join the conversation
4 comments
-
So cute:)
-
What a great friend you are! This is so pretty and welcoming. :)
-
Thanks but I wasn´t doing all by myself! :-)
-
Frequently asked questions
Have a question about this project?