Baby Shower - Ice Cream Parlour

If you know me, you know I love to throw baby showers, especially for good friends.  A couple of weeks ago, I had the honor of throwing a shower for one of my best friends, Andrea, and her baby girl to be, Harper.  We chose to do an ice cream parlour theme, and I must say, it was a hit!  Take a look at the pictures, and just in case you'd like to do something like this for one of your friends, I'm including links to the resources we used.

I'm going to show you how we planned this one, tying in the steps I laid out in my How To Throw a Proper {Baby} Shower posts (Part 1 and Part 2)...just so you can see that I really do follow my own instructions, and it works!

First, we put together a great team of hosts.  The picture below shows our team, with the mom to be in the middle.  I must say it was a fantastic team, with the perfect combination of talents, resources, and connections.

As I said above, we chose an ice cream parlour theme.  We used this blog and this blog for inspiration, and then we made it our own.  We knew Andrea was decorating Harper's nursery in pink and grey, so we used those colors.

For the invitations, I asked WestWillow to design something.  She's an etsy designer, and she's fantabulous.  I basically sent her a link to the blogs we were using for inspiration, told her what colors we wanted to go with, and she came up with this.

We decided that since we were having a full ice cream bar, we really didn't need other food on the menu.  We chose to have the shower at 3pm so that no one would be expecting lunch or dinner.  Not that we mind feeding people - it's just not what we were planning to do, so we wanted to set the tone by the time of day.  We did have a cake (what would a baby shower be without a cake?) and full beverage service.

For the decor, we did our best to stick with the ice cream theme.  You can see that we had pink and white fabric on the cake table.  We set the ice cream table with dishes and loads of toppings.  (I have to give a shout out to Lanie Beth, one of the hosts, who did a great job on the ice cream table.  It was a stunning display!)  We hung a sign above the ice cream table that said, "I scream, You scream, We all scream for Harper."  For the centerpieces, we made faux ice cream cones out of scrapbook paper and put carnations in them.  We arranged the cones in ice cream dishes, and voila - a super cute, inexpensive, centerpiece that tied in our theme.

We were very fortunate to have a budding floral designer in our team of hosts.  She wanted to use Andrea's shower as an opportunity to create her own floral table scape, which she plans to use in her portfolio.  It was her gift to Andrea, and boy did we all enjoy it.  She did such a good job!  I know who I will call the next time I need fresh flowers for a party or special occasion.  Maria Taylor.  If you need someone, just let me know, and I will send you her information.  I could post the pictures of her flowers for days, but then I wouldn't get to show you all the other cool stuff at the shower, so here are two of my favorites.  Oh, if you could have seen the flowers!

For the favors, we had another friend, Hannah, design a few different cards, again tying in the ice cream parlour theme.  We had a card with a sugar cookie recipe, a card with a frosting recipe, and a card with a sweet little saying about Harper on top.  We tied those three cards together with an ice cream cone cookie cutter, and they turned out to be so adorable!

We played two games.  A baby shower version of The Price is Right and Baby Shower Bingo (which Hannah also designed).  Both were designed and printed on cardstock, tying in the pink and white stripes.

For this particular shower, the "shop, bake, create" step was put into action in the centerpieces, games, favors, ice cream toppings, and labels.  We had the shower at a local golf club, so we used their plates for cake and their silverware for cake and ice cream.  We also paid them to set up the tables, including white tablecloths, and to clean up.  I will say that if you have a connection somewhere, it's great to not have to worry about cleaning your house before and after a shower.  Of course, there's nothing wrong with a shower at someone's house, and it can be just as beautiful.  But it is nice to pay a small fee and have someone else do the cleaning.  I'm just sayin'.

One of our hosts, Jenny Ann, made a beautiful diaper cake.  She included all sorts of sayings about family.  It was so sweet.

I know I mentioned in my previous posts about the details.  In my opinion, the details are what separate an okay baby shower from an exceptional baby shower.  And mainly, I'm talking about how the mother-to-be feels.  If she feels like you spent time on the details, she then feels loved and appreciated.  Isn't that the goal??  The details are where I truly find joy in this whole process.  Tying in the theme to as many aspects as possible.  Including a handmade gift or personalized favors.  Making the centerpieces.  Designing and printing the cards for the games.  Having the baby's name on the cake and sign.  Mothers-to-be love to see their baby's name in print.  They just do.  Probably my favorite detail for this shower was the fresh flowers and how Maria put them in special places and made such unique arrangements.  I'll say it again.  She's fantastic.  She even made this little wristlet for Andrea to wear as a corsage.  Gorgeous.

I also loved the signs Jenny Ann made for the ice cream toppings.  We used a template from this blog.  When you're planning a shower, you don't have to come up with everything yourself.  Google is your best friend.  Search for blogs that give you ideas for your theme.  Search for images of previous showers and how they tied things together.  There are zillions of ideas out there, and you can simply adapt them to fit your particular theme.

And most of all, pour love into all that you do.  It shows in the finished product.  And the guest of honor feels like the luckiest girl in the world.  I find such joy in letting my friends know how special they are.  That's why I love doing this.