Baby Shower Ideas for Boys and Girls

Baby Shower Food Ideas

When considering baby shower food ideas, it’s important to consider the type of event you want:

• Is the shower taking place in a community center with plenty of tables, or is it happening in a house where everyone will be perched on folding chairs and balancing plates on their laps

• Are you expected to feed six guests or 30?

• Have you chosen a baby shower theme that suggests certain types of food?

• What are the parent-to-be’s favorites, and does she have any dietary restrictions other than those already associated with pregnancy?

No matter what type of baby shower you’re planning, finger foods are a safe bet to allow guests to mingle and not worry about spills. Here are a few crowd-pleasing choices to consider:

• Mini quiches

• Crudites

• Cheese plates

• Barbecue meatballs

• Satay

• Caprese skewers

• Fresh fruit skewers

• Cupcakes

If you do plan to serve something messy, keep a bottle of Ivory Snow Laundry Stain Remover nearby to deal with any spills, then give the bottle to the guest of honor at the end of the shower. For drinks, consider a “mom-osa” bar, with a variety of fruit juices to mix with champagne or sparkling cider.

Decorations for a Baby Shower

Despite what you might have seen on Pinterest, there’s no need to spend tons of time and money creating elaborate decorations. Your local party store or favorite online shop should have simple banners, paper plates, and centerpieces to fit any theme you choose.

For a semi-DIY baby shower décor option that looks great, search for a customizable bunting banner you can emblazon with the party’s theme or the parent-to-be’s name.

If you want a more elaborate DIY option, you could try making a “diaper cake”—this impressive-looking centerpiece also serves as a gift of dozens of diapers for the new baby.

The cake can be topped with small toys that fit the theme, flowers and ribbon in thematic colors, or even handy small tools that the parent-to-be will find useful, like pacifiers or a Ivory Snow Portable Pretreater Pen.

Whether the baby shower is for a boy, for a girl, or gender-neutral, you can use your decorating ideas to spark conversation and help the guests connect to the parent-to-be.

Consider hanging a large calendar showing the weeks around the due date, and have the guests sign their names on the date they think the baby will actually be born. Winner gets bragging rights!

Another idea: Set up a table with a stack of index cards and pens to allow experienced parents to write out their best advice for the new family.

You can ask the parent-to-be if she’s chosen a theme for decorating the nursery and use that to inspire or pick a theme related to the new baby’s name (for example, if the baby’s last name will be Song, music might be a natural theme idea). Here are some more ideas to help you select a theme.

How to decorate for boys?

If you want a gender-specific baby shower but aren’t up on the latest baby boy trends, there are plenty of boy baby shower ideas in the baby and toddler clothes section of your nearest department store. Take a stroll through sometime, and you’ll see:

• Dinosaurs

• Jungle animals

• Rocket ships

• Construction equipment

• Cars and trucks

• Sports

• Little mustaches and bowties

Of course, you could always go super-simple and host an “It’s a Boy!”-themed baby shower, with blue everywhere (along with gifts of blue clothes to be pre-washed in hypoallergenic Ivory Snow after the shower).

How to decorate for girls?

Just like for the boys, the trends in baby and toddler clothes can provide you with great ideas for girls:

• Unicorns

• Ladybugs

• Ballerinas

• Fairies

• Flowers

• Rainbows

• Clouds and stars

And don’t forget a classic “It’s a Girl!” baby shower theme, with pink on pink on pink (including pink clothes that the parent-to-be can wash in pediatrician-recommended Ivory Snow).

Games to Play at a Baby Shower

If the parent-to-be is up for it, baby shower games can be a fun way to break the ice and help the various groups of guests (family members, friends, coworkers) connect with each other. Everyone will have fun speculating about how Great-Aunt Linda knew “Baby Got Back” for music trivia!

Here are a few easy trivia games that are fun to play at a baby shower:

• Music trivia (using songs with “baby” in the title)

• Baby animal trivia

• Nursery rhyme trivia

• “How well do you know the parents” trivia

Baby shower bingo is another popular game that keeps guests engaged while the parent-to-be is opening gifts—whatever she receives is marked down on a bingo card, and the first person to complete a row wins!

Trivia games and baby shower bingo are probably the easiest games for a baby shower, because we live in the age of the Internet, where you can easily find and download printable trivia and bingo games, or even purchase beautifully designed game cards. Search YouTube for “baby shower music trivia” and you’ll find pre-assembled compilations of music clips to play at the party.

Prizes for the winners of baby shower games are usually small, like travel-size bath items or a $5 gift card for coffee. The real prize is the winner’s knowledge that she, out of all the guests at the party, knew that a baby hippopotamus is called a “calf.”

Baby Shower Favor Ideas

Here’s an idea: Don’t worry about providing favors! Remember the purposes of a baby shower: appreciation, attention, and baby gifts for the new family. A favor serves none of these purposes.

But if you’re the type of super-host who thrives on throwing the perfect party (lucky you), then, sure, you can give out baby shower favors. Popular ideas include small gifts with custom wrappers or tags celebrating the parent- and baby-to-be. Here are a few examples:

• Mini succulent plants

• Chocolate bars

• Bath bombs

• Travel-size lotion

• Mini bottles of Prosecco

If you want to do favors, but are more of a DIY type, try setting up a “candy jar bar” with big bowls of various types of candies (think candy-coated chocolates, Jordan almonds, individually wrapped caramels—anything that won’t get sticky) for guests to scoop into Mason jars and take home.

How to Throw a Virtual Baby Shower

What is a virtual baby shower?

If your baby shower guests live far apart or if health considerations make travel difficult, a virtual baby shower can make a lot of sense to celebrate a new parent from afar.

It’s the 2020s, and the vast majority of people are familiar with the idea of virtual gatherings and have probably even attended online classes or family video calls, so your biggest consideration is probably what meeting platform most guests will be comfortable with.

Ask the parent-to-be what the guests are capable of and whether the least tech-savvy among them can get some help from relatives, neighbors, or friends that will help them attend the virtual baby shower.

Here are a few more things to consider when putting together your virtual baby shower ideas:

When to throw a virtual baby shower?

A virtual baby shower can be held whenever you wish! Like an in-person shower, four to six weeks before the due date is probably the best timing.

Invitations

While printed and mailed invitations are traditional for a baby shower, if you’re thinking of how to throw a virtual baby shower, it makes sense to send an online invitation. That way, you can include a link to the baby shower “meeting room” as well as links to any online registries the parents-to-be have created. Those online registry links will make it easier for guests to ship their gifts directly to the guest of honor.

Games

Many of the same games that you would play at an in-person baby shower will work virtually. However, you’ll once again want to take your guests’ level of experience with technology into account. Unless you have a particularly tech-savvy roster of guests, stick to games that don’t require downloading or printing specially designed pages.

This could include trivia or “how well do you know the parents-to-be?” quizzes, where you read out questions and the guests write the answers on a blank sheet of paper. Don’t worry about providing prizes to the winners—this is for bragging rights only.

Opening presents

Just like at an in-person baby shower, the guests at a virtual baby shower will want to see what gifts the new baby is getting! Because you’ll be an expert in throwing a virtual baby shower after having read this article, you’ll have already sent the guests the links to any online registries the parents set up, so they can have the gifts delivered directly to the parent-to-be’s home.

(That’s another advantage of virtual baby showers, by the way—no need to load up the piles of burp cloths and onesies and cart them home from the baby shower location! The guest of honor will have these items delivered right to her home, ready to be pre-washed in Ivory Snow Detergent as soon as the shower is over.)

Simply have her keep the packages in their shipping boxes until the baby shower, then do an unboxing live on camera for all the guests to see.

(An essential tip for both in-person and virtual baby showers: Have the parent-to-be clearly announce what each item is and who it’s from as she opens her gifts and designate someone [it might be you as the organizer, or it could be a friend or relative] to write a list of who gave what. This will make it easy for the guest of honor to write thank-you notes.)