Gary & Amanda's Baby Shower

by Liz Heather in ,

At some point in your life, you're going to throw someone a baby shower. Here's how I did it!

Sample invitation

Sample invitation

In my opinion, the best invitations are available on Etsy. I went with Olive Berry Paper and they came out adorable. To be accurate, the shower was supposed to be based on a woodland theme, but came out much more owl-y (but WHO minded? No one!) (I know, booooo, I'm sorry about that.) Honestly, my main goal for the event was to have it not be lame. I hate baby games. I hate large groups of adults playing games. No one needs any of it. I just wanted to have a simple time, with edible food, based around things that that the couple (my brother and sister-in-law) would enjoy.

Bread basket

This was the bread basket - the bread was from Cobs Bread and you need to eat some of this bread if you live anywhere near Toronto or Mississauga. This stuff tastes nuts. I'm forever thankful to Marla for turning me onto it. The little mushrooms are just mozzarella sticks with grape tomato halves on top in a sea of arugula. I would've wanted to spread that all over the table, but arugula is pricey. 

Owl cheese

This is the owl cheese that I made with my patient and loving niece Tianna. There's an instructional blog post about how to make one here. 

Poutine cups

I wish I'd taken proper photos of these guys, but this is the only one that exists. These are the mini poutine cups I assembled. These were not difficult at all - I just got the jars from the dollar store (three for a dollar), bought the Wendy's fries and gravy individually that morning (no way was I gonna make that myself, plus it was the couple's favourite fast food poutine) and got the cheese curds from the grocery store. Easy peasy. I got the idea for this when I saw this site while I was searching for baby shower ideas. And fries are always better than vegetables. 

Caesar Salad Bites

Caesar Salad Bites

I love the idea of cleanly eating a Caesar salad, so obviously I really wanted to do these.  You can find the recipe here. And I don't have a photo of it, but the world's best spinach and artichoke dip exists here and needs to be eaten by everyone alive. Some other things that were served that I, unfortunately, don't have photos of are the wraps that I ordered from Whole Foods (which were surprisingly really good - the blackened chicken salad one especially), my sister-in-law Cindy's amazing stuffed mushrooms, this pasta salad (just add pasta to the recipe) and lychees that came in a can (Who the hell knew they came in cans?! That's amazing.) - and now here are the desserts:

Acorn Cookies

Again, not the greatest photo, but here's what they sort of looked like. 

Strawberries w/ Cool Whip and Nutella

Owl Sugar Cookies

Owl Sugar Cookies

And of course I didn't make these owl cookies - look at them! They're perfect! I bought them off Etsy. 

Cake!

Cake!

And this gorgeous cake was made by the beautiful Laurie. Look at this cake! YOU can't make a cake like this! Obviously it was delicious. 

All in all, not very stressful to plan. Party Pail had pretty much all the decorations I needed, with numerous dollar store runs as well. These owl frames were in the favor boxes, alongside a small satchel of cookies and cream Hershey's kisses. 

And while it's too time consuming to list every song that I had on the playlist that I had on in the background, here's one that's just perfect for a baby shower.

(I apologize that some of the photographs aren't better, my focus was elsewhere. Won't happen again.)