Jillibean's Going to be an Aunt!!!

My sister is due with her first baby in August  We are so excited! It will be my parents’ first grandchild.

My lil sis , my momma and I are planning a baby shower next Saturday. We’re kind of freaking out because it is so close. Yikes! But I think we’ve got it all under control.

Theme: Our theme is books, because we love books with our whole hearts  We’re hosting the shower in the library Momma’s school, which has just been redone and is beautiful! Here’s my present-

Invites: On our invites (light blue paper with a border of pastel animals) we asked everyone to include a book as part of their gift. Momma’s gone a little overboard on this aspect…

Colors: When we started planning the shower we didn’t know the sex of the baby, so we decided to do pastel blue, green and purple as colors, figuring we could emphasize a “girl color” or “boy color” once we knew the sex. So we bought green plastic cups, blue napkins, purple tablecloths and plates and bowls in each color.

Décor: For centerpieces we are putting a children’s book on each table. We bought a sign to put out by the road so everyone can find the location. We also bought balloons to put with the sign and also around the library. My mom also bought some purple and blue flowers to place on the bookshelves in the library.


Games: We have planned two games. 1) Guess the first line from a children’s book. I created a list of twenty lines from famous children’s books and guests will have to guess the title of the book. 2) Guess the flavor of baby food. We’re going to pass around baby food jars without the labels and guests will have to guess what the flavor is.

Prizes: For game prizes we have a variety of lotions, photo albums, hand cream, chapsticks, etc.

Favors: For favors we created bookmarks. I designed them on Word and we printed them on white cardstock. Momma laminated them at school, we punched holes in them and then tied lavender ribbon through them. Pretty cute!

Birthday Wishes: We have a family tradition at baby showers that started when my Aunt adopted my cousin. Everyone at the shower gets a sheet of paper on which they write the baby a birthday wish for some birthday in the future. Each wish is then wrapped around a candle and tied with a ribbon. The Mom-to-be receives all of the wishes. Each birthday the baby chooses one wish from the bag and reads that with and puts the candle on his/her birthday cake. So the wishes have to be sort of generic so that they can work for any birthday, but it’s a really fun tradition. (We did a similar thing at Big Sis’s wedding shower for each of their anniversaries.)

Food: We’re ordering breadsticks from our favorite Italian restaurant, Chicken Caesar Salad, and a cake with the inscription “…And the Ryans lived happily ever after.” We are also attempting to make a baby carriage out of a hollowed out watermelon which will be filled with fruit salad.

Hopefully everything goes well!!