Bookworm Display Shower review

ericanandy

From a Planner's perspective.

I aided in planning my BFF's baby shower with her mom and sister. We did a bookworm theme based from various internet ideas.

Also the Momma-to-be wanted to have a display shower and not open gifts in front of everyone, she also did NOT  want games....... but wanted onesies decorated....

So here's how it went:

Decor-  various books throughout the room. I also purchased at the $ store small board books and used these to prop up our flowers, which were sweetpeas wrapped in hosta leaves like so:

https://www.hgtv.com/decorating-basics/sweet-pea-flower-arrangement/index.html

Also we put on each table bowels of chocolate covered almonds and raisins and gummy worms to look like dirt and worms. 

Also on the food table and throughout the room I used my son's wooden blocks to hold up a letter of the alphabet (on a flashcard from the $store). We put this down the center of the food table.

Display shower-

I had read online somewhere about putting various large baby items throughout the room to show off the gifts.

So we had the following: washline/clothespins and laundry basket, bassinet, large blanket (play toys/area), infant bath tub, high chair, and cubes for books/cards.

When guests walked in they were told about the different areas, and not to take apart the gift (which most were wrapped in ribbon) but to find the area that fit the majority of their item and place their gift in that spot.   For the clothesline we left it optional if they wanted to hang up their clothing or put it in the laundry basket. 

Activity:

Since the momma didn't want games we weren't sure what to do with all of our time. So we did two activities.

1) What's the nursery rhyme/book- a two sided 15ish question of guess the name of the book/nursery rhyme. I have this document if anyone would like it.

After people completed the questionaire people were encouraged to walk around and look at the displayed items. This is when the momma went around to the different areas and chatted with people about their gifts. 

2) ABC primer/book- when each person walked in they received an alphabet flashcard. This was their assigned letter for the book. (We were expecting 50 people but only 25 showed.... so we did have two sets of cards so people could pair up with their letter match, but that didnt occur) Then they were provided the scrapbooking page, abc letter, glue, scissors, and suggestions of what the letter could be. On a large table were more scrapbooking supplies in which they could create their letter page.

On the back of the page were two rectangles, the top was for writing a message to the baby/parents, and the bottom was a 4x6 space for us to put a picture of the people it was from. The sister went around and took pictures of each person.

 The momma walked around and talked to people while they worked. She also continued looking at her gifts. She went through some of the clothing and hung it on the line.

 Food:

The only thing different about our food (most of it was finger foods) was our cupcakes. Which we did something similar to what is found here:

 https://www.partylikeakid.com/2010/07/bookworm-baby-shower/

 Shower "Problems": 

How to do a "thank you list" when people are bringing their gifts in for display vs. GOH opening them?

We gave each person an ABC flashcard for the activity. We also asked them, because of it being a display shower, to write down the gift and their name on this card so that we have a list for the momma for her thank you cards. This worked out really well!

We had planned on 14 kids coming from ages 3 weeks-9 yo. I had purchased little gift bags/ect for the kids and had planned on them creating onesies for the baby. (Momma wanted onesies done, but we didn't really want to do onesies and our primer so we thought we'd surprise her with the ones kids were making)

yea... uh 2 kids showed... the 3 week old and a 4 year old. So I had 12 bags and no onesies! I sent the bags home with each momma who came and a fabric marker or two and asked that when they visit the  new baby they bring their decorated onesie.

I'm not quite sure if the sis who did the invites included the kid's names on the invite or not. It kind of seems like she just had the mom's name on the invite because I found it weird that of 8 sets of parents/kids, only 2 brought their kids (one being 3 weeks old). So that was more of our problem... but a problem that ended up costing me about $100 in bags, "fun junk", and onesies.

Otherwise it went great!

The babymomma said it was great being able to walk around while the guests worked on their scrapbook pages so she could visit with people or look at her gifts. 

ericanandy

Holy cow that's long! Sorry! I tried to break it into sections!