Baby Shower on a Budget

When I found out one of my best friends was pregnant with her second child, I knew I had to throw her a baby shower! This was months ago, before I even knew that I was pregnant, so I've really loved getting to visualize the shower and making it come to life. Since I was throwing this shower on a budget, I DIYed a lot of the stuff, which is all explained below!

Of course, I got a lot of inspiration from Pinterest. Once I made my food list, I decided on decorations and invitations. I used free printables from this website, which I printed on silver card stock paper left over from doing my wedding invitations and cut them to fit the envelope. I covered the kitchen table with a white tablecloth, then used about 25 paper doilies and randomly placed them around the table. Then, I used pink and grey felt (about 3 squares of each) and cut into triangles then sewed together for the bunting.

The part I was most excited about was the pink lemonade served in lace decorated mason jars! I save leftover jars (it's actually sort of a problem) so I just tied some scrap lace onto the jars with embroidery thread. The pink lemonade was made from the frozen tubes! Super simple.

For the fruit kebabs, we diced up different fruits and put them on to mini bamboo sticks ($3). My mom made a big batch of whipped icing, and the cupcakes were a strawberry cake mix.

I'll be posting a recipe for the pink popcorn next week! It's super simple to make. For serving, I cut standard scrapbook paper into quarters (6"x6"), rolled into cones, and taped with wash tape that I already had. Craft stores put scrapbook paper on sale a lot (Michael's sale is usually 4 for $1) so this is another really simple and cheap project! For the toothpick flags, I bought two different pieces of scrapbook paper in the same color palette, and cut the edges to a fringe about 1.5 inches long. After cutting the fringe off, you'll have a bunch of little strips. Fold those in half and cut the edges!

Lastly, we made pretzel rods as favors! This task wasn't as cheap or easy, but it was definitely one of my favorite things! The mold is from Michael's for $2.99, and for 40 pretzels, we used about 4 bags total of the melting candy. Everyone loved the pretzel favors, and I was so pleased that everyone noticed my little touches throughout the party! Another one of my friends just found out she's having a girl, so I'm glad we have some decorations left over!