Monkey Baby Shower

This past Saturday, I helped host a baby shower for my dear friend Janet, who is due in August to give birth to her son, Max. Since she is doing a monkey theme in the nursery, we decided to have a shower that had a bit of a monkey theme. We kept the colors to yellow, green, and brown, and I used the monkeys sparingly. However, I did make some great banners in the party colors, and they are kind of the grown up versions of vines (which monkey's swing on- get it?). There will be a post later on how-to make the banners. Here is a look at what we put together:

For flowers- I love fresh flowers! Simple is usually best, and can be a great accent to any party decor, even if they are in small bunches. I bought these bunches of mums and daisies at Publix 3 bunches for $12. I love how the white daisies have green centers. I simply put them in clear glass vases and tied the brown and white polka dot ribbon, that we used on the invitations, around them.

For decorations, I made three banners using fabric quarters from Joanns and the brown and white polka-dot ribbon from Michaels. I also used some green glass ornaments to hang on the chandelier to give a pop of green.

Since we wanted to keep things simple, we opted for a dessert shower... lunch is sometimes hard to do with more than 10 people and no where to formally seat them. We had the shower at 1:00PM and served punch with champagne, fruits and veggies, some small veggie wraps, cookie bars and mini cupcakes, banana bread, and a candy bar with Runts, Lemonheads, Twizzlers, and pear, banana, and chocolate flavored saltwater taffy (bonus points for those of you who noticed the "banana" references).
 

I also used the same monkey clip-art from the invitations and paper punch to create the food and drink labels.

For games, we played "Guess the Baby Food" and "Measure Mommy's Tummy". For the "Measure Mommy's Tummy", I put a little spin on the game to go with the monkey theme. I went and bought two Barrel of Monkeys and the guests has to guess how many monkeys would make up the circumference of her belly. We showed them the length of the first 12 monkeys just for an estimate. She ended up only being 14 monkeys around! And for the baby food game, as expected, we had some unwilling participants who couldn't bring themselves to eat the baby food. I made this sheet for guests to use to write down the ingredients.

And last but not least, I went to a local soap shop, Milagros, to get Milk and Honey soaps for the guests, "From Janet's Shower To Yours". I used the same ribbon to tie little clear bags and I made tags with the paper punch.

Despite a rough morning, we pulled it all together and it was a really nice shower. Janet got most everything she needed to complete her nursery as well. Check back soon for some of the recipes and how-to's on the details!