Baby Animal Shower

Look who's expecting?   

Psych!  It's not me!  Nikki & Henry are expecting Baby Lovely in July.  So, I rallied Nikki's Duluth friends for a zoo animal themed baby shower.  You can check out the inspiration for the theme as well as Baby Lovely's nursery here.  A lot of thought went in to the making of this party and thankfully I had help from Kathy, Lorry & Janette from Rec Sports (Nikki's co-workers and my colleagues as well).

In order to make it obvious that guests had indeed arrived at the right house, we hung some streamers on the front porch:

 Everyone got settled in our living room- thankfully all the chairs fit without being too crammed.

We had a cute little beverage station that included raspberry lemonade and cran-raspberry sparkling water.  Notice the elephant and giraffe confetti?  I found the template for them here (crazy enough, the bloggers are also named Mandy & Mike). 

I wanted to keep the food light and healthy and keep the waste to a minimum.  I recruited my favorite chef to make a few things (I didn't schedule the baby shower on Mikey's day off for nothing:) Ha!
He made a chive cream cheese spread that was spread on a multi-grain cracker and then topped with black peppercorn smoked salmon from Northern Waters Smokehaus.

 I also asked him to make bruscetta with freshly baked crostinis:

 

Nikki is a big fan of pizza and so we tried a healthier spin on her love of pizza.

Kathy made fruit pizza:

 Lorry made veggie pizza:

 No baby shower is complete without cake.  Lorry brought mini chocolate cupcakes that had a fudge filling.  They were perfect and the mom-to-be gave her stamp of approval:

 

 We kept the waste to a minimum by using my everyday salad plates, paper napkins and compostable silverware.  The only "bad" garbage we generated was the plastic cups. 
I also wanted to add some personal touches to the shower so I recruited Henry, who then recruited his aunt, to provide some baby pictures of Nikki to display.  Let's hope Baby Lovely has the same chubby cheeks as Nikki did:)

After everyone ate, we broke the ice by playing one (and only one) baby shower game.  I am not a fan of shower games (bridal, baby, you name it).  We played the Baby Name game.  Janette made some cute cards with the same animal confetti-one boy themed and one girl themed- and everybody wrote down two names (first and middle) for baby Lovely.  Nikki picked her favorite girl and boy name and whoever wrote the winning name got a prize:

And the prizes were these adorable gerber daisy plants that Lorry brought:

Continuing with the low-waste objective for the party, Lorry and Kathy made these adorable flags to hang in the living room doorways.
Baby:

Lovely:

Kathy & Lorry know Nikki's style very well and made these flags so that they could be hung in the nursery.  How cute is that?  They turned out absolutely adorable and Nikki LOVED them!

Next we were on to gift opening:

While Nikki opened gifts, the rest of us decorated onesies.  I bought a couple packs of onesies and some puffy paint and asked everybody to get crafty.  Nikki loves homemade crafts/gifts and so I knew this would be a huge hit for her.

As you can see, I covered my coffee table & tv trays with some fun wrapping paper that I had for craft time.

Here is the one that I made:

Here is the clan:

Again on the front porch:

I couldn't have pulled this off without Kathy, Lorry, Janette, Mikey and my biggest helper of all: Hannah!!

Love you!!  She was such a great help and it allowed me to keep the party flowing while also having a good time myself.  She also took all these photos to capture the fun. 

Once the party was over, the puffy painted onesies had to dry overnight.  After they dried, I packaged them  up and wrapped them in...wait for it...the crafting wrapping paper from the coffee table!  I also made Nikki & Henry a card with the confetti that was left over: 

I had a blast planning this party and am so glad Nikki had a great time.  10 weeks (or less) to go until Baby Lovely arrives!!