Gender Reveal Baby Shower

A few weeks ago I was asked to throw a gender reveal party for my dear friends Sam and Brendan. This entailed finding out the gender of their bundle of joy, and keeping it not only from them but everyone attending the party. As my sisters know.. this was asking a lot as I am not the best secret keeper… But I am proud to say I was able to keep the secret, and throw the couple a special and unique gender reveal party! (on a dime of course.) I hand made what I could, and purchased everything from the dollar store. I wanted to make sure that even though the party was on a dime that it still debuted the sex of their baby in a fun way, and that it also showed the personalities of Sam and Brendan.

I have thrown multiple baby showers, as I am currently in the stage of my life where my friends are getting pregnant, with this I have learned that the more personal the shower, the better it turns out! This particular shower was a fun, laid back, gender reveal party involving all of their family and friends of both sexes. With this I wanted to stay away from traditional “baby shower” decor, games, gifts, and food.

(A guest made this diaper cake as the gift. She did such a great job with the owl theme, and the gender reveal theme!)

For the decor we had owls as the overall theme as Sam loves owls. She collects them from every place she visits, and has them as decor throughout her house. I thought this would be a great theme for the gender reveal party. Brendan is obsessed with the “mustache” movement. (So much that he has a tattoo of a mustache on his index finger.) With this I made sure to have mustaches on the boy owl decor and I created a mustache frame for the gender reveal ultra sound and doctors note. (This was a great keepsake for the parents to be to hang in their babies room.)

For decor, I hung colored owl print outs I found on clipart. I also created puff balls from tissue paper, and hung bibs and onsies from the windows. I had a sign created that I hung over the gift table saying “Whoo will the baby be? A Boy or Girl?” with owls on each end. It was very simple, inexpensive, yet perfect! I also used rubber “owl” duckies that I found on etsy. I put these in the non alcoholic punch bowl, and they turned into perfect bath tub gifts for the parents!

(I found these on Clipart and printed them out on glossy paper. I taped them back to back so from any angle you saw the adorable owls. I then hung these from twine from the ceiling throughout the party.)

(Here are the instructions to create the hanging tissue puff balls. I used two colors for each puff. I hung these from the ceiling using twine as well.)

Sam is a teacher and loves to read so I wanted to make sure to incorporate books in the party. I remembered that at oldest’s baby shower for L, they had the guests use books as cards for their gifts. I loved this “green” idea, as well as it allowed the parents-to-be to have endless amounts of books with personalized inscriptions inside from the ones they love. Brendan loved this part as well, as a guest brought a perfect book to incorporate his techy passion with his child, “Goodnight Ipad.” I would definitly recommend this book for any techy parent-to-be or child!

When guests arrived we offered blue or pink owl pins for them to choose from to guess what they felt the gender of the baby was and pin on their shirts. This was a great way for the guests to be involved in the guessing, as well as for the people who didn’t know each other to start up conversations. I also made pins for the parents-to-be to wear. I purchased these pins from the Dollar Store, and just taped the print outs over the pin. I created this in WordArt using the same owl print outs I hung throughout the party. I then placed “mom to be, and dad to be” on each pin. (only a dollar a pin!)

We offered two games, “guess the poopy diaper” and the “sippy cup challenge.” “Guess the poopy diaper” is a fun game that involves guests to guess what melted candy is in the diaper by smelling, touching, and tasting it. The hardest part is getting past the poopy look of the candy, in order to guess them each correctly. I used four different diapers, with four different candy bars. (snickers, twix, butterfinger, and crunch.) The first person to guess all four correctly, won! This was a fun, yet disgusting game that really got guests cracking up!! (Unfortunately I did not get a picture of this game.)

The last game we had was the “sippy cup challenge.” The men particularly loved this game, as it involved beer. We had 6 sippy cups, and the first one to chug all the beer won. Very simple, and nothing to do with the gender reveal, but we knew it would loosen the party up!

I kept food for the party simple. I made the couples favorite hourdervs and finger foods. It was a personal yet simple, and a clean idea that they really enjoyed!

(For table decor, I used mason jars I already had, and tied twine around the tops, and placed flowers inside for center pieces. For table runners I used burlap that I also already had at home. The table covers were from the dollar store, along with the “Baby!” cups, plates, and napkins.)

For desert, I had Cup O’Cakes create owl cupcakes. She made vanilla cupcakes with green and pink lemon icing, and created owls out of them using oreos for eyes on top. They were a huge it! and great for additional owl decor.

For party favors/thank you gifts we gave each guest a mini bottle of champaign to celebrate the arrival of their baby girl! (To fancy the gifts up we put them in cellophane bags I purchased from the dollar store, and tied them off with twine. The same twine I used to wrap the mason jar center pieces, and hung the owl print outs from.)

The party consisted of 25 people, and I knew I wanted to make sure they were all involved in the reveal. With this I decided to use silly string. I purchased pink and purple silly string from the dollar store, and wrapped them in white computer paper, and tied gender neutral ribbon around each to add some decor. I had enough for each guest at the party.

After everyone arrived, and made their guess of the gender, (before games.. since that is what everyone is there for!) I had them all circle around the couple in the backyard. We counted down, and at 0 everyone sprayed the couple with the silly string. This was such a fun way for them to find out while involving everyone at the party they they were having a girl!