Children's Book Themed Baby Shower

Early in November I threw a shower for a friend of mine. This was my first full fledged "theme" shower. I had thrown showers before but none had any sort of theme. It was show up, eat food, play a couple games and open presents. The biggest difference was, that was before Pinterest. So after checking out various ideas for possible themes we agreed that a book theme would be the most fun to put together.
I really had a ton of fun working on this shower. I LOVE to plan parties and get everything together for it, and I really love seeing how much other people enjoy it.
I loved (and still love) the Little Golden Books growing up, so when I saw this invitation on Etsy, I knew I had to have it. Plus it is so bright and cheerful!
http://www.etsy.com/listing/106517556/little-golden-books-baby-shower?utm_campaign=Share&utm_medium=PageTools&utm_source=Pinterest

I used some of William's book collection to decorate.

All the food had a book theme as well.

There was:
Make Way For Ducklings punch
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Strega Nona's pasta salad
Very Hungry Caterpillar fruit salad
Three Little Pigs Ham sandwiches
Blueberries for Sal Blueberry mini cheesecakes
Peter Rabbit  Vegetables

And very special cookies from a special friend of mine at Fig Tales

 

How cute are these?? They are little Peter Rabbits. They were very tasty as well!

As per the mom-to-be's request, I chose games that were more "thinking" games rather than the traditional, guess the baby food or fake poopy diapers. They went over really well and people really had to think. The first game was "Alternative Children's book titles", I found here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/29883446/Owls-and-Books-Baby-Shower-Alternative-Titles-Game
This was a lot of fun. It's harder than it seems too, especially if you have an older audience or an audience without kids.
The second game I came up with myself. It was a name the book from the quote. This was also a little harder than I expected. I thought that I had chosen a good mix of easy and hard, but I did not know my audience.

My favorite part of the shower had to be the craft that I planned. It was a great time filler and ice breaker. I saw on Etsy that someone was selling wooden blocks with Children's story book characters on them. They had been cut out of various books and attached to the wood blocks. What an awesome way to personalize a cute/functional toy for baby!! The blocks were hard to find. I checked JoAnn's and Michael's and Hub Hobby, but they all only had 1" blocks or smaller. I knew that was too small for a baby toy. A quick search online and I had exactly what I was looking for! www.craftparts.com has wholesale wood parts and at very good prices. I think I will save the how I made the blocks for another post, but here is the finished product.

I think it went really well. I am glad I took the plunge into themed baby showers.