Nursery Rhyme Baby Shower

My mom, my sister, and I threw a baby shower for my cousin over the weekend. Let me just say that we are completely awesome at what we do. Its no wonder we are the go-to people in our family when their is an event to be planned. (I totally missed my calling by not going into the event planning business but, hey, I'm only 25, so its not like I'm at the end of my road yet.) The shower went off without a hitch (okay, maybe a few hitches, but nothing we couldn't handle) and our theme was a total hit. Everyone had a really great time and the mom-to-be was sent home with tons of new baby stuff.

We wanted the shower to be classy and laid-back, as well as creative and fun. We decided to go with a nursery rhyme theme, which is perfect for a baby shower for the obvious reasons, but it also provided us with so many options for the games, food, and prizes.

All of our foods were inspired by different nursery rhymes: baked macaroni and cheese - Yankee Doodle Dandy; roast beef wraps - This Little Piggy, etc. We even turned the food into a game by having teams try and guess which food the nursery rhymes inspired. Even the drinks had nursery rhyme inspirations!


The games are definitely the most fun part about showers. Our invitations were based on the rhyme, Monday's Child, and we also used the invitations and rhyme to play a game "predicting" when the baby would be born. We also played Nursery Rhyme Pictionary. Nursery rhymes are so much more fun when they have to be drawn instead of recited. My favorite game was based on Baa Baa Black Sheep. We filled three jars full of cotton balls and asked the guests to guess how many "balls of wool" there were for the master, the dame, and the little boy who lives down the lane. Our final game was not based on a nursery rhyme, but I highly recommend it for a baby shower. It was called My Water Broke and there is nothing as funny as a bunch of grown women vigorously sucking on ice cubes.

We incorporated nursery rhymes into the games prizes as well. We put each gift into a different gift bag and we put a nursery rhyme onto the front of the bag that correlated with the prize: knife set - Three Blind Mice; crock pot - Pease Porridge, etc. The game winners had to pick their prize based on the nursery rhymes. So not only did the mom-to-be get to open gifts, but the guests did as well.


And of course, no shower would be complete without favor baskets. We bought green and yellow baskets and stamped "A tisket, a tasket" onto the handles. We put bread mix, pumpkin butter, a love bean, and cookies shaped like dogs and snails in the baskets with little notes we made with whatever nursery rhyme the favor was based on.

Overall, the shower was really great. And I think we also impressed our guests with how many nursery rhymes we were able to work into the shower. If you're planning a baby shower and you want some really good ideas based on nursery rhymes let me know and I'll be happy to pass along our inspirations!!