Tea Party Baby Shower

I've been working for weeks to co-host my best friend's tea party themed baby shower.  Her sister, best friend from high school and I did our best to pull together many of our best Pinterest inspired ideas and come up with a few original ideas of our own.

 

 

 

We started by setting up in our community clubhouse. We went back and forth on the best way to arrange the tables, but decided on a beautiful long table on one side of the room.  We covered it with pink table clothes and used a light green one in the center to tie together our main color scheme.  I got a great deal on these at Party City.  While I was picking up the table clothes I stumbled upon the cute napkins that went perfectly with our theme. 

 

When decorating for a party, I make it a point I don't use themed items.  For example, with this party I worked really hard to stay away from any store bought items that said, "It's a Girl" or much of anything premade that was intended for a baby shower.  I think it always looks best when you put things together that are pretty or coordinate rather than are covered with logos or sayings.

 

For the silverware we used those small little clips (the ONLY thing store bought that was intended for a baby shower) to hold the napkins together.  This was one of those ideas that just came to us at the last minute.  It was also twofold, we used the clips in one of the games; the one where every time you catch someone saying the word 'baby' you get to take their clip and the person with the most clips at the end is the winner.

 I just love how it all came together.  Some of the special touches we added down the table were doilies, fresh cut flowers in vases wrapped in the same ribbon we used for the diaper cake, bowls of artificial sweetener, glass flutes with sugar and tiny silver spoons from Party City. 

 

Notice in the picture the pink water in the vases, I'll admit that was an accident that turned out totally AWESOME!  I put the flowers in the vases the day before and some of the flowers were color died that really bright pink, well I guess some of the petals were floating in the water so when I woke up the next morning the water was this pretty color of pink!  Bonus!!!

 

Next, we did something a little different with the pom poms.  We hung them on the backs of some of the chairs rather than hanging them from the ceiling (which was impossibly too tall).

 

We even added one just sitting in a white tray on a coffee table on the other side of the room; where we set up an area for mingling and opening gifts. You can find a really easy tutorial for making these poms at UsefulDIY. The tray I used was one I had at home (I think I got it at Target years ago.)  I also added some pink 12x12 scrapbooking paper from Michaels as an accent on the sides.

 

 

Our food table was packed with some really yummy food, including these cute white chocolate covered pretzel sticks with a pink drizzle and these super cute (and yummy) chocolate dipped pink strawberry wafers.  The idea for the wafers came from The Crazy Life of a Crafty Girl. I also love the bow I added to the clear bowl.  I believe it's little details that make the decorating really come together.

 

 

I was so excited that I had this silver tray tower to use for my little cucumber tea sandwiches.  I added a pink bow to the top to give it a special touch. I might be even more excited that I was able to get my silver shining so pretty (see previous blog post about that).

 

 

My besties sister also made this to-die-for crockpot hot chocolate (recipe found here) and of course, we topped it off with pink and white marshmallows. 

 

Okay, so I have a confession...we didn't really have a useable hot tea pot at our tea party.  I know, big disappointment.  However, I can't say we really missed it.  We had our Keurig ready for heating up water to steep our tea.  It worked out perfectly! (I did have my ceramic tea set to use, but failed to get a good picture.)

 

 

To counter our hot drinks we also served pink lemonade.  There's a really easy recipe for this at Food, Family & Finds.

 

 

So, I have another confession...the container we used for the lemonade went totally berserk on us.  The spout wouldn't stay attached so we used the twine to hold it together.  We balanced it off with some twine at the top to make it look like we wanted it that way. Nice save, if I say so myself!

 

We also realized that the spout was at the very bottom of the container, which made for awkward pouring so we craftily turned over a bowl to sit the container on top of. Again, nice save!

 

On to something a lot easier...water.  My besties sister found these cute coordinating water bottle covers and they were all the hit.  You can visit the NotableAffairs Etsy shop where she bought them.

 

My absolute next favorite part was the beautiful cake and cupcakes made by a great friend of ours. 

 

 

The little pink tea pot on top was just to-die-for.

 

And the details she added to the flowers, what can I say, she went above and beyond.  And the best part, they tasted so yummy.

 

Onto the nonedible cake; the diaper cake.  This was actually the first diaper cake I'd ever done and the first thing I made (other than the invitation) to get the ball rolling on decorating.  I wanted something simple and elegant, well as elegant as a cake made out of diapers can be. 

 

I rolled lots (I didn't count) of diapers and bound them with rubber bands.  To cover the rubber bands and hold them all together I used four different ribbons from Michaels (used my online coupon).  I also found these scrapbooking flowers in their 50 cent bin (yes, I just said that).  What a lucky find was that!  I knew when I saw them they would be perfect.  The flowers actually had this silver alligator clip on the back so they were super easy to attach and my bestie can reuse them!

 

 

This next idea is one of my absolute favorites.  I only wished when I had my baby showers this idea had been around.  It would have made for some entertaining late night diaper changes.

 

 

What you do is put out some sharpies and diapers, a cute little basket and ask the guests to write some cute and/or personal messages on the diapers.  For example, "Call Rachel, she'll help with this one."  or "It's okay, poop is supposed to stink."  I really don't have a specific link to this idea, I actually saw it first at a shower I attended, but I'm pretty sure you can search it on Pinterest.

 

*I do have a disclaimer on this though, our friend, the one that made the beautiful cake, used one from her shower.  At the next diaper change she noticed that her baby had these 'bruises' on her legs. Because of her daughters health concerns she called the doctor who told her to come right in.  When she got there they discovered that it was just the ink from the sharpies that had apparently run when the diaper got wet.  (Might want to make note of that or disclaim that if you choose to use this idea.)* 

 

Finally, we thanked our guest for coming with homemade raspberry lemon sugar scrub.  I got the recipe from Bespangled.  Super easy to make, however I think I added more extract than what they suggested. I put them in 4 ounce mason jars and added a pink ribbon to the lids. We used the Etsy printable to make the 'Thank You for Coming" labels and I glued them onto brown tags I got from Michaels dollar bins.  I used twine to tie them around the jars. 

 

I also had my bestie sign a card and I framed it to put with the gift. I thought that was a nice touch.

 

 

We also had guest write their address on the outside of the envelopes of the thank you cards to make it a little easier for our baby mama when she gets ready to send them out.

 

Hope you found something to inspire or help you with your next baby shower!