Ajax's Woodland Adventure gender neutral couples baby shower

We are expecting a little baby boy soon and while my mother might have hosted my baby shower, I was the one who designed the decorations.  I wanted the theme to match our baby's nursery, Woodland Adventure, which you can see pictures of at this blog post.

We decorated the tables with light aqua table clothes and baskets of stuffed animals with helium filled 'hot air' balloons.  Each place setting was set with cloud shaped vinyl place mat, baby shower bingo paper, and favors.

Woodland Adventure Cupcakes

We designed cupcakes to match the theme of Woodland Adventure's forest animals and hot air balloons.  The animal cupcakes were chocolate with green icing piped out like grass with sugar animal decorations.  The hot air balloon cupcakes were lemon cake with sky and cloud icing and hot air balloon sugar decorations.  We placed the animal cupcakes on a moss mat on the table and placed all of the hot air balloon cupcakes on a clear cupcake stand to look like they were floating in the sky.

Couples Shower Games & Favors

While I was 'allowed' to do the decorations, my mother was adamant that she was responsible for the games.  I've attended several baby showers and was concerned that the games would be too old-school for the modern couples shower I wanted.  However, she came up with some great couple friendly games that everyone enjoyed!

One-handed Dressing

In teams of two, couples had to just use one hand each to diaper and fully dress a stuffed animal.  Grandma won, but parents-to-be didn't fare too bad.  It was great fun to see the different couples, with kids or without kids, dress the animal.

Green Beans or Peas? Carrots or Yams?

Remove the labels off of jars of baby food, number the jars, and have each person try to guess what the food is.  Lots of fun with similar colored foods. Meats are especially hard.  Make sure you keep the labels so you can reattach them and give them to the parents-to-be for use later.

Baby Mad Libs

The most fun had at the couples shower was completing and reading pregnancy mad libs.  Lines like "She was dilated 54 centimeters and the baby figure skated out" brought tears to the couples.  You can write your own mad libs or find them online.

Favors

Along with our usual gifts of home made jams, we also provided customized pencils for people to use during games and to take home.  Simple wooden pencils covered with scrap booking paper or even just designs printed from your computer can look amazing! Cut your paper a little less then the length of your pencil and about half an inch wide. Add Mod Podge to the back of the paper, wrap it around the pencil and let dry for an hour or two.  Be careful when sharpening the pencil, I was able to hand sharpen them but my battery powered sharpener couldn't handle both the pencil, paper and Mod Podge.