Milk, Cookies and Bedtime Stories Baby Shower Part 2

As I said in yesterday's post featuring the printed goods, I hosted a baby shower last weekend for my friend. I'll show you the decorations and other little touches today.

 One of my favourite books as a kid was If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I thought it would be a perfect guestbook for a milk and cookies shower and it's a bedtime story too! Guests signed throughout the book, so now as they read the story to their baby boy they can remember all the special people who loves them.

My dining room doesn't really have a good set up for a back drop right behind the table, but you can see the far wall from sunken living room. So I decided to use this as a bit of a focal point. When I'm not hosting showers, I have a big black and white picture framed on this wall. For the shower, I covered the frame with a blue tablecloth (I just pinned in the back, it worked great) and then I taped (I used sock tape, used for hockey sticks) a moon and stars to create a "bedtime" type of look.  I've blurred it for the sake of privacy, but each of the stars held a letter that spelled out the baby's name.

In the space between my kitchen and my sunken living room I hung tissue poms. For the record brown tissue paper is near impossible to find (at least in my city), so if you're ever going to need it for a project, look far in advance and if you find it, stock up!

For my mantle I made a bouquet of cookie flowers using bamboo sticks, spearmint leaf candies and fruit creme cookies. I put them in a milk bottle (and a vase because I didn't have an extra bottle) filled with sugar to stand them up and because white sugar looks like milk.

Hanging under the mantle I made a cookies and milk bunting. I cut out the same shapes used on the invitation, just blown up bigger, using my silhouette and strung them up. 

 Then I filled the mantle with some of our favourite books. I had to talk to Mady about letting us borrow her books for the party. She was a little concerned that people would take them home or that they would have to stay up there forever. I assured her that after all the ladies left she could look at them all. Which she spent the evening doing. How cute.

I used the same shapes from the bunting (and the same moon, just smaller, that you'll see in just a minute) to make a diaper cake. I found a book about a cow (you know, milk, so I figured it fit the theme) that I used as the topper. If you're ever making a diaper cake, I highly recommend the "fanned" version over the "rolled" version. So much easier to make!

Just to fit into the theme, I put the prizes inside white paper bags with blue tissue paper and a cookie tag on the front. The prizes were a set of star shaped cookie cutters.

 For favours each guest took home a "midnight snack." I cut out milk cartons (again, I used my silhouette - what would I do without that thing?) that had the word "Thank You" cut out from the front. Then I filled bags with mini star sugar cookies and popped them inside. The cookie shaped tag on the front flips up and has a quote from Good-night Moon on the inside ("Good-night stars, good-night air, good-night noises everywhere"). I had a hard time closing the cartons. I tried double sided tape (even the good strong kind) but the odd angle of the top made them pop open. I had though of taping from the outside or using a staple, but I thought they would a) look ugly or b) pull the folding perforations apart. Mark suggested that I apply wood glue with a toothpick (so that it was thin enough) and then hold them for a couple of minutes. Sure enough it worked. Thanks honey!

So that's the decorations. Tomorrow I'll show you the food table and give you a run-down of the activities.

linking up here: