I know you’re all gonna be jealous, but I get to co-host a baby shower! Yay, me! But, Dopers, I need your help. So far, my instincts aren’t really helping me in my co-hosting duties.
For example, I’m in charge of the centerpieces. (Why do we need centerpieces? Why are we having a sit down shower instead of, say, something fun? Are we just going to sit around and go, “Oooh, a receiving blanket”? These, my friends, are Questions That Must Not Be Asked.) Well, it turns out that suggesting we put bottles of Jagermeister on each table so guests can get snockered when the baby shower gets boring isn’t “constructive.” Nor, apparently, is suggesting we turn it into a drinking game, everyone doing a shot whenever someone says “baby.” (Hey, I think it could be fun!)
So I need help. I need to come up with a fun craftsy game we can all play, since someone ruined the decorate-a-onesie game by giving the mother-to-be three dozen onesies. (Not me, but nevertheless: ) I also need centerpiece ideas.
Help! (Bonus points for suggestions on how to survive the shower without gouging my eyes out would also be appreciated, and, no, I can’t skip the shower – the baby-to-be is my niece.)
Wait a sec - who told you the mother is only going to need a dozen onesies? She’ll need that on a bad DAY!
Seriously, I would have loved decorated onesies from my shower! So much more useful and fun than “baby bottle clothespin drop” and far more human than “identify the mystery baby food” (though the last one is fun if you have the strongest stomach at the party).
Congratulations, Aunti Campie! My sister absolutely adores being an Aunt, I bet you’ll love it as well!
There’s some company (companies? WAHMs?) out there who make this really cool “cake” out of cloth diapers and baby bric-a-brac – might be cute, and useful. Cloth diapers come in really handy, even if they never go near the baby’s butt.
Sitting here trying to remember games – there was one where my sister put dabs of jarred baby food on plates (she used actual baby spoons, they came in handy later) and had everyone guess what flavor they were. Man, that stuff is gross!
Can’t remember anything else - but if you’re at all lucky & your sister’s feeling good, that party will be a blast!
Decorate bibs. I have no idea what to do with centrepieces. Float bathtub toys? Ugh. Arrange action figures? Whatever, make them something that the guest of honour might be able to use in her latest adventure. As for your eyes, well, cut your nails really short, just in case.
Well, three dozen should get her through three days, then.
Spoiler’d for those who find catty girl fights boring:This is a power play by the shower organizer to “punish” another co-host, who knew we were playing decorate-a-onesie but nevertheless gave the mom-to-be all her hand-me-downs from her own kids. So, we could still play decorate-the-onesie, but then the guilty party wouldn’t know she was being punished, would she? But now, because we have to come up with a substitute game, we all know not to cross the hostess.
See why I think alcohol is a necessity at the party?
Thanks, fessie. My sister is a trooper, and will have a good time no matter what because she’s just that type of person. Me, not so much.
Oh, sweetie, I think you need something a little stronger than alcohol. Oxycodone, perhaps! But decorating bibs is a great alternative - punishment *and *art.
The diaper cake centerpieces are awfully cute. There’re directions for how to make your own if you Google it, or you can buy them pre-assembled.
Is it going to be held at someone’s home or a restaurant?
If it’s at a restaurant and it’s a large group of women with the eating, talking and opening gifts (very long and boring), there isn’t a lot of time for games and most people weren’t really that interested in games anyway.
A game my mother enjoyed at a shower she attended is “Gift Bingo,” (it is also less embarassing/annoying than some of the alternates).
Give each person a Bingo card-- a sheet of paper with a 5 by 5 section of squares, each section one to two inches in size. Mark the center square free. Have the participants fill in each of the squares, with things that might be recieved as baby gifts “pacifier, bottle, safety pins, rattle, etc”. Then, as Mommy to be opens her gifts, people mark the squares that contain the gifts. Have small prizes for the first to get a line filled in, the whole square covered (or the most squares marked off, depending on whether anyone gets all their items correct) and anyone else you see fit to do. (I vote for a flower or a candy bar, or a balloon as a prize).
A couple I used when hosting my sister-in-law’s shower:
Write down EVERYTHING the new mom says as she opens the gifts (ie “awww, how cute!” and “It’s so soft!” then, at the end, call everyone’s attention and say you’d like to point out that the mother-to-be said all these things on the night of the baby’s conception. Then read 'em all out. This had everyone, including my 85-year-old grandmother, weeping with laughter.
Make up a SHORT quiz entitled “Television Babies”. Write the first names of kids from TV shows (ie Alex, Mallory and Jennifer for Family Ties) in one column and the show (and number of kids) in another. The person to correctly match the most wins a prize (or the person to correctly match all of them first).
Give everyone a piece of paper and a pen. Tell them to put the paper on top of their heads and draw what they think the baby will look like. Then tape them up and share. These can later be made into a “baby shower album” so the new Mom and Dad can laugh at their family for years to come.
At the one and only baby shower I ever hosted, one of the games was for everyone to bring a baby picture of herself, to be placed in an envelope at the door before she came in, without showing it to anyone. Later we all tried to guess which picture was who.
At the last one I hosted, I asked everyone to bring their favorite book from childhood to start the baby’s library. Each person would then say which book they’d brought and why they liked it before their gift was opened. It was a fun little get-to-know-you thing and a big hit.
Beadalin’s idea is lovely. Do you have to have games? I know that I would much rather talk with the other guests and the mom-to-be than play traditional shower games. (Says the woman who was dragooned into making a wedding gown out of toilet paper last Sunday.)
I’d make sure there’s wine at the shower. (Why, yes, I am a fan of alcohol as a social lubricant.) True, the expecting mother can’t drink it, but the other guests will thank you. It made the toilet paper wedding dress bearable for me.
We played this at the last shower I went to. It was fun. The big prize for the first person at each table to get a bingo was the pot of mums at the center of the table. That takes care of your game and your centerpiece right there!
I’ll be hosting another one next weekend, so I’ll be paying keen attention to this thread. The Bingo idea is a fun one – could make the interminable opening of gifts seem to go a little faster.
The last baby shower I went to (which is only the second one I’ve ever attended) had a game where 10 everyday baby items were put into lunch bags: the bags were sealed and numbered, and you had to guess what was in the bag just from the feel of it. Some were obvious, others not so much – things like a bib, a rattle, a pacifier, etc.
Of course, there were also the horrid “guess the baby food” and “how much toilet paper would it take to go around the mother’s belly” games, but that one was actually fun.
We have a winner! I suggested this as a substitute for the decorate a onesie game, and it looks like this will fly. I also pointed out that you can’t have too many onesies. I was, however, corrected. Turns out that a million onesies is enough, and since that’s apparently how many my sister was given, no more onesies for her.
Truly, I like the bib idea, since babies (at least in my uninformed experience) wear bibs way longer than onesies, so she’ll have more opportunity to bask in the memories of what will be the Best Baby Shower Ever!!!
(Apropos of which, I was informed today that I need to “donate” prizes for the raffle. And would I please consider at least a television, as we need to have some good prizes.)
I also volunteered to bring wine to the shower. I think I’m gonna need it…
) I also need centerpiece ideas.