Beyond
determining roles, next up was finding the perfect shower theme. Lulu let us
know she wanted something with lots of color and that the nursery would loosely
be themed around The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We didn’t want to focus the
shower on just The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but thought that was a great place
to start. After much research, we found it! The perfect theme to fit our friend
and that we could all rally behind. Books! In my décor research I found a
shower that was themed around a few different books and we were sold! From
there we picked our books, largely on what we thought would fit a colorful
décor scheme and based on which books we most enjoy reading to our sons. Our
top five picks, in no particular order, were Curious George, The Little Blue
Truck, Goodnight Moon, Dr. Seuss, and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, of course.
Once
we landed on the theme and books, Ms. E and I met to brainstorm food. The final
menu and Ms. E’s adorable names for each dish are below. It’s totally inspired.
The Food
As
already noted, Ms. E managed all things food and it was wonderful! I’m so
grateful I wasn’t in this shower thing alone, she loves tackling party food –
as she reflected on in her recent blog post
(http://lifetossedtogether.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-career-in-baby-shower-food.html)
– and she’s totally awesome at it! She made everything! Even the adorable names
for the dishes.
Curious
George:
Curry-ous
George Chicken Salad Tea SandwichesMan with the Yellow Hat Cucumber Tea Sandwiches
Where
the Wild Things Are:
Wild
Rumpus Veggies and DipKing of the Wild Things Fruit Salad
Good
Night Moon:
Gouda
Night Moon Cheese Plate
Little
Blue Truck:
Read
to Pop-Corn
The Very Hungry Caterpillar:
Very
Hungry Caterpillar Cupcakes
The Décor
I
love decorating! It’s fun and parties are a unique opportunity to explore since
the decoration is meant to be short lived. We included copies of each book as
part of the table décor, and I tried to have a decoration for each book as
well. Thanks to our sons, we had a lot of the books already and were even able
to use some of their toys for decoration. Resourceful, why, yes, we are, thank
you. ;) The décor items and books mostly accompanied the adorable food that Ms.
E prepared. In addition, I tried to bring in a lot of color since that was
specifically requested. Lulu, our mama-to-be, already knows my place and I was
hoping she would walk in and feel like the home was remade to suit the shower.
So, I took down curtains and family photos to make room for decorations and
hung lots of plastic tablecloths to bring in bright pops of color above windows
and over the food. It took a bit of time, but the cut tablecloths that hung
over the food might have been my favorite. I found the idea somewhere along the
way while researching, but can’t seem to find the source blog now. Sad. Regardless,
I love how it came out and it was an inexpensive way to bring in color, color,
color!
My
other favorite décor item and labor of love was the diaper cake. It seems like
baby showers these days require a multi-tiered “cake” made of diapers, and we
wanted to be sure ours was up to the fun as well as serving the functional need
of providing our mama-to-be with diapers for her coming little guy. Since we
knew Lulu was going for The Very Hungry Caterpillar in the nursery, I played it
safe here and got a Hungry Caterpillar toy as the cake topper and decorated
around that color scheme. The cake was “frosted” with blue and green plaid (I
love plaid!) receiving blankets and the top of each layer was covered in red
crinkle paper to hide the diapers below. I hid a few functional surprises
within the center of each tier too for Lulu to find as she dismantles the cake
to use those precious diapers. It might seem silly, but the cake is a fun
centerpiece for a shower and dismantling the cake from my shower provided us
with quite a few much-needed diapers! So, I was glad to share the joy of
diapers and pass it along.
Ultimately,
the shower came together well and Lulu seemed to enjoy it. Our only real
glitch, I think, was that we weren’t quite ready when Lulu, her mom and
mother-in-law arrived. Woops. Ms. E and I had been juggling prep with taking
care of our little ones, Lil’ O and Lil’ Sir, plus my new puppy. (More to come
on life with little pup in a future post.) Thank God my mom was with us to help
us juggle – she pitched in taking care of the little guys, watching pup and generally
helping us with some of the prep tasks. She was so helpful! Once the shower
actually started and Ms. E and I came down from our prep frenzy, I think all
went well. Lulu at least seemed pleased, and at the end of the day it’s all
about the mama-to-be. :)
Love
you, Lulu.