lessons from a babyshower

So a friend of mine (we shall call her "3Circles"...it's an inside joke) and I planned a baby shower for a friend (we shall call her "GranPig" as it is her favorite animal and she is Grandma) and her daughter having twins (we shall call her "Pigglet").  The shower was yesterday!  HOORAY!

Here's a picture of the crowd...no official count, but I think like 75 people showed up!

Look at how cute these cakes are!  Pigglet and Daddy chose woodland creatures for the babies room theme!  These are the cutest cakes I have EVER seen!  Good job GranPig for getting them.

The afghan is FINISHED!  Here it is on the back of my chair.  Pigglet and Daddy seemed to like it a lot!  Job...done.

This was the BEST idea of the whole shower.  Instead of a guest book, we had everyone write their name on a 1 1/2 inch x 4 inch piece of scrapbook paper.  Then we hot glued them onto a wreath form.  It is SO cool looking and will be put in the babies' room I am told.

Anyway moving on from the cuteness.....the lessons learned:

1.  It takes a TON of time to organize a baby shower.  Who knew?

2.  Games: necessary???? We played 3 games: memory, how big is the belly, gift bingo.  Games were fun BUT they took FOREVER to get going.  For example I had to go to every table to insure they understood the memory game I had created....we have "Identical Twin Memory" and "Fraternal Twin Memory" on different tables.  Identical was easy and normal....fraternal was different so it took some explaining...they got it and all was ok.  So ARE games necessary?  I think yes, you buy a gift, you come to the party...you expect: games, cake and opening of gifts. 

3.   Talking above 75 people is VERY difficult.  Accomplished, but difficult.

4.  Executing "black out bingo" with items on the bingo card that are not brought to the shower is depressing.  On the bingo cards I put things that I received at my shower, figured all shower gifts are the same....WRONG oh so wrong.  NO ONE ended up with a bingo and it took over and hour for her to open all of her gifts.  No swim suits for babies being born in June????  No swing for babies????  Only 1 package of hair bows for twin girls????  It was quite confusing to me.

5.  Scrapbooking at a baby shower brings out the creative in non-creative people....it was interesting.  The lesson learned is that scrapbooking takes SO much stuff, it is counterproductive to bring it all and separate it for different tables.

All in all, the event was a great success!  3Circles and I had a good time.  Pigglet and Daddy took home 2 vans worth of baby stuff and 90% of it won't get used, but that's a lesson they have to learn...