It's a boy and that means it's time to bust out the baby blues and sports gear. Of course, not all boys are sports fanatics, so encourage his inner artist while still in the womb with a Picture Party or one of these creative themes!
Time of Day Baby Shower
Description: This theme focuses around different times in a baby's day such as feeding time, playtime, bedtime, bath-time, etc.
Decorations: Consider doing a clock theme, or decorations that represent the different times such as the sun, the moon, a toy, baby bottles, or rubber duckies.
Gifts: Have each guest bring a present for a specific time of the baby's day. For example, guests can bring gifts such as a bib or bottle for feeding time, jammies for bedtime, and toys for playtime.
Refreshments: Serve a buffet of different foods from breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Dessert can include a clock shaped cake, or cupcakes with little baby bottles charms on top.
Games: These should focus on different timed events, such as musical chairs, timed guessing games, relay races, etc.
Favors: The baby shower favors can be items such as cookie cutters in bottle and teddy bear shapes, baby bottle votive candles, or bath ducky candles.
Memories Baby Shower
Description: The focus of the shower is the month and/or year that the baby is born in. Guests can bring a scrapbook page or tiny booklet for the baby, or photos, newspaper clippings, popular music, almost anything to put into a time capsule. These memories will definitely be treasured!
Decorations: Hang movie, music, and other posters that commemorate a specific year, it can be the year the baby is born, but it's more fun if it's the year the mom was born, or some other meaningful era, and play music from that time.
Guest's Attire: Have your guests come dressed in that theme if it commemorates a past year. (e.g. Poodle skirts, and leather jackets for a 50s theme)
Refreshments: Serve foods that commemorate the year or decade. For example, if your theme is 50s, serve hamburgers, fries, and milkshakes.
Games: Create a questionnaire to ask the mommy-to-be about her likes and dislikes at different ages. Have your guests guess the answers. Another fun game would be to have your guests recount their earliest memories of the new mom and read each memory aloud. Have everyone guess who the memory belongs to and have fun taking a stroll through memory lane.
Favors: For the baby shower favors, give your guests a CD of music from the era in a personalized CD cover.
Colorful Baby Shower
Description: Decorate and base the shower on a favorite color, or if you can't make up your mind, have a crayon box party. This shower idea can be a perfect theme for baby boys or baby girls by basing the colors on the gender of the baby. Deviate from the usual blue, pink and yellow by using more jewel tones such as purple and gold or lush colors like moss green and rose.
Decorations: If you choose to do multiple colors, decorate the place with lots of colorful streamers, balloons, and Crayola crayon cut-outs. Have coloring books on tables on one end, cookie or cupcake decorating on another end, and various white onesies on another where your guests can decorate them for the new baby.
Refreshments: Make your food fit in with them color scheme as well, by having a candy buffet with jelly beans, m&ms, skittles, and gummy bears, and have different colored juices for guests to mix as they please.
Gifts: Bring colorful gifts for the new baby, or for a second-time mom, bring gifts to her in her favorite color.
Games: Ask your guests to come in bright colors and give each guest a diaper pin. Forbid them from saying the word color, or any color name and whoever says one, will lose their pin. The person with the most pins at the end of the night wins. You can also have your guests create self-portraits of themselves as babies on paper plates. Allow them to get in touch with their inner Picassos or Da Vincis and have a variety of materials available. The more traditional artists will most likely prefer crayons, colored pencils, and water colors, but encourage the more off-beat ones by having lots of different beads, marshmallows, pebbles, sticks, and clay.
Favors: For the shower favors give multi-colored candy in mini candy dispensers, mini gumball machines, or mini wooden color pencils to match the colorful theme.
Picture Party Baby Shower
Description: Make the shower into a scrapbooking party so that the new baby will have a scrapbook ready for all his or her memories! Provide scrapbooking supplies and have each guest make a separate page for the baby's scrapbook.
Decorations: Your decorations should reflect the picture theme, so post baby pictures of the mom and dad-to-be. Hang these up with clothespins from clothesline around the room.
Gifts: The scrap-book itself would be a great gift for the mommy-to-be, but for a second-time mommy, consider having your guests pitch in for a professional photography session for the new family.
Refreshments: Serve a "collage" of refreshments, such as plain cheese pizzas to which guests can add their own ingredients or have an ice cream sundae bar with a variety of toppings. For the drinks serve your guests smoothies.
Games: For the games, have your guests each bring a baby picture of themselves, and have them guess who is who. The person with the most correct answers wins.
Favors: For baby shower favors, give your guests personalized cameras, yummy personalized photo rice krispy treats, or personalized photo mint tins.
"Take Me Out to the Ball Game" Baseball Baby Shower
Description: Have a baseball themed party that would be fun for men and women alike. This would be a perfect boy's baby shower!
Decorations: Set up a backyard picnic and designate an area for your ball game. Decorations can include banners, foam fingers, teddy bears dressed as baseball players, balls, and mitts. At the playing area, set up bases, and get ready to play a T-ball game.
Guest's Attire: Ask your guests to come ready to play ball!
Refreshments: Serve fan favorites like hotdogs, peanuts, popcorn, and lemonade slushies. Serve mini portions and set them up as appetizers so that guests can mingle around the field.
Games and Entertainment: Have a combination relay race/ baseball game. Set up a T-ball stand at the home-plate. The batter hits the ball and runs to first. In order to move to the next base, the batter must first do something baby related, such as change a diaper, drink from a bottle, or strap a baby into a car-seat. Have both teams simultaneously doing these activities and the fastest team wins. Aside from the T-ball stands, have a variety of balls and mitts for the adults who'd like to play a real baseball game later.
Gifts: Guests can bring sports themed gifts for the new boy, including mini baseball caps for baby's first game, personalized baseball onesies, or decorations for his nursery. Favors: Have baseball themed party favors, such as baseball themed custom cookies or even personalized lemonade pouches so they can re-create the day later.
Bath-time Ducky Baby Shower
Description: This theme is related to the Time of Day, but it focuses on bath-time! This theme would be great for a summer-time pool party.
Decorations: The decorations should include lots of rubber duckies, fish, and bath-time toys. If you're hosting the party outside, be sure to have plenty of beach-balls, floatation devices, and lots of blue and yellow. Set up some bubble makers on the side to create that bath-time look, and of course have some bubble wands and lots of soapy water ready in case any of the guests want to get in on the action.
Guest's Attire: Tell your guests to come dressed for bath-time in their favorite bathing suit, bathrobe, and to bring their favorite bath-toy.
Refreshments: The refreshments should consist of pool party foods. You should have a spread of chips, vegetables, fruits, and various dips. For the drinks, have something bubbly such as mini sparkling cider bottles.
Games and Entertainment: Have a water-themed relay race by having guests "Tinkle in the Pot" with water balloons and check out other great baby shower games that fit your theme.
Favors: Give each guest their own tube of bubbles and bath ducky candles to enjoy long after the party and custom rubber ducky cookies to enjoy as they dry off.