How to Plan a Baby Shower (Under $50!)

My beautiful friend Abbie is blooming with baby. There's a little one in her tummy and we get to meet him or her (him..?) this coming November - and I'm so excited! She is going to be one fantastic mother and I just can't wait to watch her rise to the occasion.

Until then.. there's a lull in babytown among my friends. Around February to April, quite a few of us popped out bundles of joy and drool, and as 3, 4, 5 month year olds are now a part of our regular, daily lives, the excitement is calming (for a little while). (I think). (Unless someone has something they would like to share / wine they would like to refuse).

So, what better time to throw a baby shower for Abbie that has all the fixin's: a midsummer's eve, tea, and - wait for it - a theme.

That's right, this past week my most recent dream-event came to fruition: an Alice in Wonderland themed Mad-Tea baby shower! There's a mouthful. Filled with spots of tea and light refreshments, formal invitations and a seating arrangement, I had a blast throwing this one together - and on a budget, too!

Check out how I pulled it off (for under $50):

The Invitations: $5

Print the invitations yourself - and if you can, design them too! I designed a 4-page booklet invitation involving as many Alice quotes I could find. Once printed, I glued the invitations onto a decorative cardstock (100 sheets for $1) and tied them together with ribbon. The invitations were 4 pages each - so altogether, the invites only cost about $5 to print including ink and paper.

The Mailing: $0

Have the Fish Footman distribute the invitations instead of mailing.

The Decor: $25

This is my favourite part.  

Eat me, drink me.
Photos by www.newvintagemedia.ca

Do your own centrepieces. I took a little inspiration from here and a little from here, spraypainted my vast collection of wine bottles (not all mine, I swear) and glued a ribbon around them. Voila. The total cost to do this was $5/spraypaint colour ($15) and $2 for ribbon. Also, tell your friends you're collecting the wine bottles... don't try to establish your own collection!

$1 Garage-Sale teapot.
$5 teacup set.
Photos by www.newvintagemedia.ca

Plan ahead, so you can gather cool theme-appropriate finds in advance on the cheap. Scour Goodwill, garage sales, and your mom's house for little nicknacks which will add a touch of love. Total garagesale / decor expense (non-centrepiece): $6

Nicknacks from the home.
Photos by www.newvintagemedia.ca

 Be consistent with your theme. Get creative.

Photos by www.newvintagemedia.ca

 Take advantage of the dollar store. Sure, these plates don't look the prettiest. I'm aware. For the actual party, we used square pink plates which were slighly sightlier, but they're still plastic plates. The upside? 20 plates for $1. The downside? Waste and un-classiness. The upside? Where am I going to find 20 washable plates that people will actually let me borrow for an outdoor party? The downside? They're plastic. The upside? Nobody notices after you put food on it.

Photos by www.newvintagemedia.ca

 Mix and match setting pieces. I got lucky and found a set of 12 teacups at a garage sale for $5 (which I'm not counting in the total cost because I don't consider them "just for the party"), but on the other tables I supplemented for cute teacups I have around my house.

A key to Wonderland, for Abbie.
Wonderland is now a synonym for Motherhood.
Photos by www.newvintagemedia.ca

 Candle it up. If you can pull off an outdoor party in the evening, use tealight candles as low-cost decor which add a little ambiance. I dove into my already-huge candle collection.

Photos by www.newvintagemedia.ca

Hang stuff from a tree. I mean, come on, you HAVE been on Pinterest lately... haven't you?

Photos by www.newvintagemedia.ca

Have fun. So it's not perfect. So my tablecloths are actually twin sized sheets I stole from mom's linen closet. So we ran out of chairs. We had fun with it!


The Food: $20

Ain't nothin' like a good potluck. I put together a lemonade, a variety of teas, some finger food sandwhiches and a crostini with a balsalmic reduction.

Obviously our lemonade was so delicious it danced around like this.

Lemonade: $3
2 cups lemon juice
2 cups sugar
2 cups water
Mix, and 12 cups of water (or to taste)
Add 3 real lemons (in slices) to make it look like, you know, you used real lemons

Mine looked.. sort of like this! Thanks, All Toasty, for a prettier picture than I could take.

Cucumber & Cream Cheese Sandwhiches: 15 Sandwhiches = Appx. $5
White bread
Cream cheese
Cucumbers (skin cut off) sliced
Tomatoes
Prepare sandwhiches, cut into quarters

These aren't the actual ones I made (but I hope to get a photo real soon!), but they look prettymuch like this!

Balsalmic Reduction Crostinis: 25 Crostinis = Appx. $5
1 loaf of french bread, sliced thinly
2 avocados, sliced thinly
2 tomatoes, sliced thinly in halves
2 cups of balsalmic vinaigrette, boiled down into a reduction
Slices of mozzarella cheese, to your desired thickness/ thinness
Place tomato, avocado and cheese on crostinis and bake at 275 for 40 minutes
Remove from oven, let cool, and drizzle with balsalmic vinaigrette

There's lots of variations on the Crostinis, but this recipe is the most cost-effective / pretty I've found. You can use goat cheese, strawberries, pesto... you name it, you baller you.

Thanks to my friend Alexa for making them cute as pie.

For dessert, I ditched the traditional cake for cake pops - the benefit of cake pops is that you can make hundreds in a few batches and freeze them, which is what I did. I've used my June batch of cake pops for one engagement party and now two baby showers.

Cake Pops: 1 Batch = Appx. $7
Bake a cake mix according to box instructions - let cool, and crumble with fingers. Add 1/2 container of icing and continue blending with hands.
Roll cake pops into balls, lay on cookie sheet, and flash freeze for 30 minutes.
Remove from freezer, place candy sticks in the cake pops, and flash freeze overnight.
Melt baking chocolate, pour over cake pops, freeze for 1 hour.
Drizzle another flavour / colour of baking chocolate over cake pops, freeze for 30 minutes.
Serve or freeze.

Potluck
For the remainder of the food, 3 other ladies brought some cake loafs - to satisfy the sweet tooth. In future, I should probably ask what flavour they're bringing, because we ended up having 3 (albeit very different) blueberry loafs!

The Games: $0

To keep costs low on the games, we kept it simple and fun. The first game involved a pack of playing cards and a little impromptu headbandz: guests had to guess whether the object / character assigned to them was Alice in Wonderland related or baby related... and then had to figure out what it was. That went very smoothly!

The second (and last) game involved a few water balloons and some brave ladies. In typical relay race fashion, we all had to get from Point A to Point B and back with a little challenge (between our legs). Putting a filled up water balloon between our legs, we had to shimmy our selves around until our water broke - "where" it broke on the course indicated when Abbie's will break when, you know, everything goes down. In everyone's case, it was at the end!

Here is a great list of other fun baby shower party games which cost little to nothing!