Woodland Animal Baby Shower

It seemed fitting today, on Labor Day, to share with you all the details from my sister’s recent baby shower. It’s strange to have my own birthing and raising baby days behind me, but I’m now discovering the joy of my siblings having children of their own!

My youngest sister is having her first baby in a few short weeks and I could not be more excited to meet her new little girl….(yes, I’ll have another sweet niece!)

In honor of her little one arriving, I helped throw her a baby shower with a super cute theme….Woodland Animal.

This is actually the same theme as she chose for her baby’s nursery, so it seemed fitting. I was really in love with the cute little orange foxes that seemed to be all over the craft stores for fall.

They were the big inspiration for the shower, along with the colors we picked, copper and teal blue.

My aunts, mom, cousins and grandma were all such a big help with pulling things together. We work very well together as a party-planning team! Delegate, delegate, delegate!

Food

We kept the dinner menu fairly simple, serving pulled beef sandwiches and a variety of veggies, fruit, crackers and dip.

I had fun making this owl veggie tray with dip bowls for eyes!

As well as this hedgehog cheese dip ball with almonds for spikes & black olives for eyes and nose!

My aunt and cousin made about 6 dozen sugar cookies in the shapes of arrows and foxes for the party as well. They took the time to meticulously hand frost each one and they turned out amazing!

I found a cute idea online on how to make acorn treats using mini Nilla wafers, Hershey kisses and butterscotch chips. One afternoon my aunt and grandma came over, and along with my kids helping, we cranked out about 200 of these.

They were such a fun touch to have scattered around the table, and we even filled treat bags with them so the guests could take some home with them.

My mom made her famous zucchini muffins with cream cheese frosting for another dessert.

And I made birch bark pretzel rods using white chocolate, drizzled with milk chocolate.

As a matter of fact, birch trees were another big element we brought in to decorate for this shower.

Decorations

I found some large birch logs and a huge birch stump and thought they’d work great with our theme. We found ways to incorporate them in different spots around the room.

The stump made a convenient location to place our “fill in your address” thank you note cards.

I even found birch bark paper straws on Amazon that worked great at our drink station and other areas as decoration.

One of my aunts made this adorable woodland diaper cake that we used as a centerpiece for the table. It had a little crocheted fox baby hat on the top which was so cute!

Games

As for games, we kept this to a minimal. Personally, I am not a huge fan of playing games at showers, but I wanted there to be some element of fun aside from just the food and gift opening.

So we came up with a Name that Baby board, featuring baby pictures of different celebrities mixed among family members to see if guests could guess who was who. This one was fun to play.

We also found an easy scratch off winner game in the Dollar Spot at Target that involved no skill whatsoever! Just grab a penny, scratch and see if you’ve won a prize!

Lastly, we had a diaper game, where guests were asked to write a funny expression on the back of a diaper. For the parents, who will soon be changing 100’s of diapers, we thought they might enjoy reading each tidbit for a laugh in the process.

Gifts

Of course the gift opening was a super fun part to watch as well.

Everyone was “oooing” and “ahhing” over the cute little baby clothes, toys and blankets.

We asked each guest to bring a children’s book in lieu of a card. We collected the books in a basket and now my sister and her husband have lots of great new stories to read to their little one.

Looking back at all of the past showers and parties I’ve thrown, I realized I have never done a baby shower until now. I had so much fun pulling all of these ideas together, and couldn’t have done it without the help of my amazing family. I’ve also decided, someone ought to invent a “baby diaper” scented candle, because I forgot how much I love the smell of a fresh package of Pampers! LOL!