Once Upon A Baby Shower

The Theme:  Once Upon a Baby Shower

My best friend was having a baby, and I wanted to throw her a proper celebration!  She loves to read, so I thought it would be fun to do a book shower.  When we found out she was having a girl, we decided to focus on a book theme fit for a princess - Once Upon A Baby Shower.  You can check out my pinterest board for this theme here.

The Decor:

We decided to keep things practical.  One of the hostesses came up with the idea of creating baskets for each table based on the mommy-to-be's favorite fairy tales.  She filled each basket with useful goods for the baby and made each basket look beautiful.  It was great that a large part of our decorating budget went towards gifts for the baby.  

We also used the colors of the baby's nursery so that the mommy-to-be could use the baskets in the nursery if she wanted to.  We were lucky to have such a talented hostess on our team.  She sewed the liners for all of the baskets and that helped keep costs down.

The Snow White basket was full of things to help baby eat - bibs, spoons, plates, etc.

The Princess and the Pea basket was filled with swaddling blankets and a baby doll.

The Sleeping Beauty basket was full of pajamas and blankets.

The Princess Bride basket was full of "princess" gear for the baby.

The Rapunzel basket was full of hair bows, hair brushes, and a bow holder.

And, of course, the Cinderella basket was full of shoes and adorable socks.

The Menu

We catered most of the meal to make things easier.  We ordered the mommy-to-be's favorite salads and breadsticks from a local restaurant.  We cut up fruit, and I made Israeli Couscous with Apples and Dried Cherries.

We printed out the menu and put it in a frame so that everyone would know what was in each salad.

Two of the hostesses made these beautiful cupcakes with edible pearls.  Not only did they look great, but they tasted amazing!  This is now my go-to recipe for cupcakes and frosting.  The cupcake recipe can be found here, and is a doctored box recipe that is really easy.  The frosting recipe can be found here.  It's a little bit more time consuming to make, but it is worth it!

Favors:

For favors we got antibacterial lotion.  Nice to have on hand when visiting the new baby.  I'm not a fan of favors, but it's nice when the favor is something practical that everyone can use.