Polka Dot Baby Shower

We hosted a surprise baby shower for our friends from New York when they flew across county for our baby's 1st birthday. It was 5 months back. They had the baby who is now almost 3 months old. I know, I had been very lazy past few months. Lot of things going on, but back to business. This was the first party we hosted for someone else so I was very excited about the decorations. I love decorating for parties and I don't get those opportunities very often so I look forward to them. Challenge was, it was planned the very next day of the birthday party and they were staying in our house. Good and Bad for planning. Good because I could shop and arrange some of the things along with birthday related stuff and they won't notice (remember, it was a surprise party). Bad becasue there were still some things we needed to do that might be noticed as they were staying with us. I managed somehow, they had no clue about the shower. We were able to send them to meet other friends the morning of their party and informed all friends to come earlier than they did so we can shout SURPRISE!

Here are some pictures and the details of the arrangements. Big birthday party came in very handy as I was able to reuse a lot of stuff, including some food.

They were having a boy and they didn't say they have a prefered color for baby stuff, so we went with bright party colors. Mixed colors polka dots was kind of the theme. You can see it in Cake, napkins, Thank you gift bags (get a peek of them in Wine cabinet on the left), thank you cards, and printed game cards.

This beautiful yet simple cake was made by Frost My Cake bakery. They did an awesome job with our daughter's birthday cake too. 

I made this Diaper cake. Looks like a model of Leaning tower isn't it? It was a quick fix version, only took 15 minutes to do this. My first one, you can see here, took about 2-3 hours. I guess the more time spent, the better it looks. Yellow stand was a vase for $3 and a cake board wrapped in yellow wrapping paper. I made an extra batch of Brownie pops while making them for the birthday party and decorated them with orange sugar opposed to the lavender I used for birthday party. Mom to be was next to me but she did not have a clue.

We served Chocolate fondue, also an extra batch planned along birthday party, with some pound cake, marshmallows, macaroons and fruit. I bought this fondue pot long ago for $7.99 at TJ Maxx. Just enough size for a family or smaller get togethers. Homemade cookies with words related to baby, mom and dad. I baked the cookies before their visit, but I couldn't decorate them 4 days in advance, so I did the night before, after everyone slept. Now you understand the challenge!

Cupcakes, candy were from birthday party the day before.

I have setup a small game station where we had a card for everyone to sign, game cards for Baby Word Scramble, Price it Right etc., which I made and printed to match with the polka dot theme, pencils, 'Mom To Be' badge, 'How big is my Tummy' ribbon.

We played fun games and made Daddy change a diaper too. Here are some games played by the couple.

The couple were very happy and so were we that they came all the way here and gave us an opportunity to celebrate the baby shower. They had a beautiful baby boy this summer. We are looking forward to visiting him. I will post about the birthday party soon. Actually, I am waiting on the professional pictures hoping she might have captured all the detials better than us.

PS: I masked some names and faces in pictures to save privacy of the couple.