Maitland Travels: Baby Shower BBQ

I knew that I wanted to have a co-ed baby shower for a while. I always thought it was funny that dads were traditionally excluded from such an important event, and I wanted it to be a big, fun celebration in which everyone in the family and our circle of friends could get together and be a part of. I had found this one blog online from a mom that had done something similar that inspired me to plan a backyard Baby Shower BBQ.

click here

As many of you know, Chris and I don't really have yard space to speak of since we are currently living in a town home. That meant one of my lovely friends would have to be willing to let us hold the shower at their house. And I was in luck because Katie O'Shea and her parents were more than willing to allow us to use their space at their family home in Longwood, Florida which made the perfect meeting spot for guests traveling from different parts of Florida and the Orlando area. It also was a great place for entertaining complete with a pool and a backyard that backed up right to the golf course!

The next step was to actually plan and get everything together for the event. I couldn't have done this without the help of my amazing mother-in-law Cindy, brother-in-law Mike, and his wife Tanya. Cindy and Tanya hosted the event and helped pick out all the decorations while Mike provided all the delicious food and favors for the party. And cooking for 35+ people is no easy task.

And seriously thank goodness for Pinterest! It really helps an indecisive person like me create a theme and find different ideas that I like that are creative to make everything come together.
Here are two great ideas I stole:

Guest Book Sign In

DIY Baby Wreath

The hardest part about this whole event for me was finding invitations I liked. This was pretty important to me because I wanted to find ones that were affordable and would accurately describe what kind of event I was having, a.k.a make the boys want to come!
The website tinyprints offerred a wide variety of non-traditional shower invites to choose from, from co-ed showers to beer and diaper parties. I was really excited to get ours ordered and printed!

Another priority to me was coming up with some fun games to get everyone involved in and to win prizes! I wanted to think outside of the box so with the help of Cindy I was able to come up with some traditional and not so traditional ones that were sure to be crowd pleasers:

Baby Bottle Chug (Beer or Ginger Ale)
Daddy's Day Out Chipping Tourney (played something similar on our Babymoon Cruise)
Diaper Egg Toss
Nerf Gun Baby Bottle Target Shooting
Baby Word Scramble
Baby Crossword

And here was how they all turned out:

Baby Bottle Chug

Winner: Brett Trahan

Daddy's Day Out Chipping Tourney

Winner: Andy Long

Diaper Egg Toss

Winner: Chris Maitland and Ken Mayer

(pretty sure they cheated)

Baby Bottle Target Shooting

Winner: Candace Holland

Word Scramble/Crossword

We had some extra prizes left over so we also did random name drawings which allowed everyone a chance at winning something!

Like this guy!

Food was important too and Cindy, Mike, and Tanya helped create this delicious menu:

Cindy also came up with the idea of having a pickle bar which was a huge hit- and not just for the pregnant lady!

And last, but not least: CAKE! I was very excited about this part of the day. Katie had given me the name of a neighbor of hers that ran a cake making business on the side. I had seen some of her previous work which was amazing....