Feb 26 2010

Baby Shower Games


Posted by Dee under baby showers, party ideas

Executive Homemaker has recently had a series of amazing games to play during your baby shower. In fact the amount of games here you may have to end up with a week long shower to find time to play them all!

I have researched several free, fun games for you to play at your shower.

Celebrity Baby Who Am I?

We all know celebrity’s are know for coming up with some unusual baby names, and this game plays on that idea. It is also a great ice-breaker game, as it encourages your guests to talk to each other.
Before the Shower:Write down the names of some celebrity babies on post-it notes or cards (you will need one of each of your guests).
During the Shower: Keeping the names hidden attach the card to the back of your guest. They then have to ask questions to other guests to find out who they are, the catch is they can only ask questions where the answers are yes or no! e.g. Am I a Female?, Is my mother a singer? Does  my father have brown hair?
A few examples of baby names are Apple Blythe Alison Martin, Brooklyn Beckham, or Suri Cruise.

Guess the Baby

Before the Shower: Ask each of your guests to supply a baby photo of themselves (you can ask when you send out the invitations). Attach each photo to a board or hang from some string with a number on each photo.
During the Shower: Give each guest a pen and paper to guest which baby is which guest – set a timer and give your guests 10 minutes.

Baby Pictionary

Before the Shower: Come up with a list of 20 or so things relating to babies. Write each one on a separate card.
During the Shower: Split your guests into two groups, and it is just like the normal game of pictionary only use your home made cards. A few examples of things to draw include. Stretch Marks, Changing Mat, Breast Pumps, Dirty Nappy, Sleepless Nights or Baby Powder.

Baby Shower Hosts have an activity pack with ready made games (that can be adapted to any theme of shower) including ”my water’s broke” game and guess the size of  mummy’s tummy. Alternatively, Shower My Baby has their own activity pack, with three of their most popular games including pin the dummy on the baby and a prediction game (guess the weight, eye colour sex of the baby).

Feb 22 2010

Dinner Club


Posted by Dee under organisation, party ideas

A few years ago a dear friend of our got married in New York, which meant we got to enjoy this amazing city with several of our friends, before we left we did some research on restaurant  and places to eat, each night we enjoyed an amazing meal, good food, good wine and great company.

Upon returning home, whenever we saw these same friend we would end up in either the local curry house, pizza place or occasionally a local tapas restaurant. Although there is nothing wrong with any of these places it seems extremely limited when we live in such a cosmopolitan city!

Enter the “Dinner Club!” Now once every few months we organise a night out in a new restuarent. We have 5 couples in our club – but rarely manage to get all 10 people together at once. Each couple takes it in turn to organise a date, pick the resturant and is incharge of the booking. Planning a few weeks in advance means we all have time to organise our schedules and give those with children and chance to arrange babysitters.

After the meal, we discuss our likes and dislikes about the meal (we were never organised enough to have created survey cards), and make notes of our favourite courses! So now we get to enjoy all the fabulous places to eat right on our doorstep.

Looking for more help on setting up your own dinner club, check out Executive Homemaker’s guide.

Jan 28 2010

Pea in the Pod Shower


Posted by Dee under baby showers

This is a great idea for a baby shower, especially if the mother to be is expecting twins (or more babies). As green is the main colour in this theme it is gender neutral and easy to adapt.  

Invitations

  

Sweet Pea Invites

Sweet Pea Invites from Shower my Baby

Angela Sgro has a tutorial for invitations, based on a formal wedding invitation (complete with space for directions, maps and gift registry), if you are looking for a simpler invitation, see her Thank you cards. If you aren’t creative, Shower My Baby, has an amazing range of Sweet Pea products including Invitation and Thank you cards.

Decorations

Again Shower My Baby’s range includes most the things you would need for decorating your home, from balloons to banners, paper plates to lawn signs.  If you want to get more creative, you could try making a nappy pea in the pod centerpiece of the table (directions at Cutest Baby Shower Ideas). Or take inspiration from Julie Mulligan who made papier-mâché pods and used carnations as peas, I love her glass votives surrounded by fresh snow peas.  Alternatively to decorate a room why not hang massive peas from the ceiling like as seen on the  Everyday Celebrating site.   

Games and Entertainment

I found two great games for this themes, a pea in the pod crossword and pea pod brooch game.  

You can put a pea in a pod twist on some classic shower games, like the baby food tasting game by including some mushy peas. Or Pass the Produce get twenty different produce items, like a pea pod, a carrot, bananas or apples. Get all the guests to sit in a circle with their hands behind their backs and pass the produce around asking each guest to guess what the item is and write it down.  

Favours

For favours or prizes for the winners of the games, you can do something simple like mini potted sweet pea plants or sweet pea scented candles (see Just Candles). 

The Celebration Shoppe, has a tutorial for Pea in the Pod favours, you can buy face cloths for as little as 50p in Dunelm Mills or Primark, and Yankee Candles do several green candles, which can be purchased from Just Candles. Alternatively, you could use green bath bombs for the “peas.” Lush’s Avobath would be perfect for this. 

Peas in Pod Chocolates from Good to be a Girl

If you want edible favours, you can make cupcakes with green icing or pea pod cookies, (you can buy pea pod cookie cutters are CCC Shop) or you can try these Chocolate Peas in the Pod from Good to be a Girl are fabulous, you can use any round chocolates or sweets, and can buy green chocolate foil from the CCC Shop. 

Food and Drinks

Your guests might be unimpressed if all you served them was peas. Salads are a great idea, as the green will match the decor. When Infarrantly Creative hosted a Pea in the Pod shower, they put together an amazing menu, complete with “Pea”nuts, Lemon Pop”pea” seed Muffins and “Pea”nya Colada Punch.