As a child, I can still remember going to my grandmother’s house for an occasional baby shower. It was always a fun event that I looked forward to. You always knew there would be some sort of sherbert punch, delicious cake, and games. Of course, you would get to see lots of sweet baby outfits and items too. This last month, I had the honor of planning and putting together a family baby shower for our soon-to-be newest member. The mom-to-be picked out our sweet shop theme from these darling invites which were created at zazzle.com. Check out invites here…

The main colors of the invites, white, pink, and gray, set our decor theme in motion, and I was also inspired by the invites chalkboard design and pattern. I created a Pinterest board where we began collecting ideas that we might like to incorporate into the shower. The must-haves a candy bar, some baby block centerpieces, and red velvet cake just to name a few.

Thinking about my favorite sweet shops, Lauduree came to mind. They have the cutest sweet carts at their store locations. I decided it would be fun to create a lemonade and punch cart from an antique tea cart. I found a sweet cart on Marketplace and transformed it by painting it white and creating the top section by using some stock spindles and extra wood pieces from Lowe’s. I ordered some pink and white fabric online and sewed an awning to top off the cart.

After completing the cart, I knew we needed to have an accent table for gifts, inspired by the invite, we built a giant chalkboard to complete our sweetshop theme. The chalkboard was created with some 1 x 3s, 4 x4s, and an 8’ x 4’ 1/4” piece of smooth MDF. We painted the MDF with chalkboard paint from Michael’s craft store. I sewed an awning that we stapled to the top to match our punch cart.

On the tables, we went with solid pink and gray rented table cloths accented by gray wicker chargers, white china, and linen napkins tied with pink and white swirled lollipops.

To thank guests for coming we purchased pink and white polka dot goodie bags and added chalkboard stickers written with thank you in white chalk pen. We also purchased these supplies at Michael’s craft store.

For the centerpieces, I purchased white paper-covered square boxes and taped off the edges with 1” painter’s tape. I painted the center of the boxes with chalkboard paint. After the paint dried, I used some letter stencils to fill in the letters with white chalk pens. On the day of the party, we added pink zinnia flowers inside the box. We blew up balloons wrapped in plastic attached to ribbon decorated sticks and put them in the center of each flower pot to look like suckers.

I had a lot of fun designing and creating this event. It was wonderful to gather our family together to celebrate. I think grandma would have approved my efforts.

Take care,

Christina