Winnie the Pooh and Friends Baby Shower

So I have been waiting for weeks to make this post. I have been MIA in the posting department because the majority of my time has been spent helping my cousin renovate her house (posts soon) and getting ready for her baby shower. I don’t know if she reads this blog but I didn’t want to take any chances since it was a surprise! I even made a fake Christening invitation so my cousin had something she thought she was attending!

So my cousins are not going to find out the sex of the baby. I want to know, but I understand why they don’t. That made the shower a little bit harder because it had to be gender neutral. Jenn is a huge Disney fan. She is the reason we started traveling there more. Our original theme was DISNEY of course. I even started an invitation idea.

We soon found out that she had decided on the baby room theme…Winnie the Pooh! Now being the huge Tigger fan that I am we decided to change the theme to match the baby’s room. The first thing we did was pick a venue, Stony Hill Inn. My aunt found it and we decided to have dinner there to make sure we liked it. Myself, my sister, my mother and my aunt (soon to be grandmother) all had an amazing dinner there. The food was excellent.

At the dinner I threw out a few ideas I had for the shower. I LOVE planning events. I really should change professions, or at least do it as (another) side job.

After the location and theme were set it was time to make invitations. I scouered the Internet for baby Pooh and friend pictures. Most weren’t high enough quality for my purposes. I finally found a Disney baby sticker set that had most of the Pooh characters, so I used that.

I love the way the invite came out. We also decided to do a diaper raffle so that they could have a jump start on diapers for when they had the baby.

Next were the favors. I found these awesome pots at IKEA for 50 cents!

Our idea was to make “Hunny” pots. So I got some yellow paint from the craft store.

Next I painted a honey overflowing a pot design on all (55) pots. It was a long process but they came out cute.

Next I had to make it authentic Winnie the Pooh and write HUNNY on all the pots with a paint pen.

We wanted people to be able to (kind of) use the pots post party. My original idea was to write Jennifer’s Baby Shower and the date on the opposite side. Cheryl talked me out of it and we settled on a cute tag that we would attach to bags of cookies inside.

Now the hard part…baking cookies. I found some really cute Disney cookie cutters online for pretty cheap. We decided on chocolate chip, peanut butter (and oatmeal options if people were allergic) and sugar mickey cookies. The cookie cutters came with a mickey face cutter and a mickey side profile cutter. Since they didn’t know what they were having we decided to have the mickey face (boy) and put a bow on the other (girl). The hardest part was the bow. The icing I got was super annoying to get out of the tube and I had to use a toothpick to shape all the bows, but I think they came out great.

Then we packed everything up!

Next on the list was a diaper cake. I had helped Cheryl make one for her boss a while back and knew I could make a great Tigger one. I got a pack of newborn diapers (smaller and easier to roll), a Tigger bath towel, Pooh and Tigger washclothes and Pooh and Tigger rattles. I could not be happier with the end product! Everyone loved it. I even wrapped it in cellophane to keep the germies out.

Final preparation was shower games. Not everyone plays them and there are a lot to choose from. I know my cousin so I chose simple, cute games. We did Daddy Knows Best (my cousin’s answers were hilarious), a word search to keep people occupied when they got there, and of course, Baby Bingo.

Finally the day had arrived. I was so excited to see my cousin’s reaction and get to show off all our hard work. We got there early and set up the tables. I had decorated extra Hunny Pots so we made centerpieces out of them. I also made a congratulations banner to string between two sets of balloons. Sadly we had to tape the balloons to the wall because the banner was too heavy for them, but it stayed. We had some great raffle prizes for the diaper raffle (courtesy of my aunt) and I found the most adorable cake topper online for the cake.

She got a lot of gifts and a lot of diapers!

The shower went perfectly. She was surprised (somewhat) and loved all the cute details we added. All the guests also loved everything. Cheryl and I got tons of compliments and most people said we should go into party planning as a side business (if only I had the time).

I wouldn’t change a single thing about the day. Except maybe the rain storm that hit as we were carrying all her presents into her house. Other than that it was perfect and I can’t wait for my little niece or nephew to get here!

If you would like to purchase any of the design work for this shower please email me at jessicarlin@gmail.com and I can give you a quote.