Marisa Meidle’s Baby Showers

What could be more fun than creating a unique baby shower cake?

Here are some fun and easy ideas for baking baby shower cakes that are sure to be a hit with both the mother-to-be and her guests!

# 1) Carousel Cake: Exchange your plain cake separator with a carousel separator kit. The prancing ponies easily snap on to a regular kit to add some fun without any fuss.

# 2) Baby Blocks: Bake a rectangular or square cake and section it off into smaller squares and blocks.

Color each square a different color and pattern to make it look like a set of (maybe A-B-C?) blocks.

Or write a special message, some motherly advice, in each block. - That’s MY favorite idea!

What’s yours?

For More Ideas Visit Baby Shower Cakes.

A magical baby shower poem in sonnet form accompanied by an original lullaby composed for the harp. To see the finale’ go to www.squidoo.com/baby-shower-poems

“Poems are the words of our angels speaking, trying to get a word in edgewise”. That’s one of my favorite quips from my friend, Phillip Boulding of the string duo, Magical Strings. If you have arrived here, you may have seen my video where he recites a sonnet for his granddaughter, Rowan and plays the special lullaby that he wrote just for her.

Every child on the way or newborn should receive the love and beauty that Phillip puts into his work. If you haven’t seen it yet take a look at baby shower poems. It’s well worth the trip.

Phillip has recorded an album called Beneath The Moon that includes the lullaby Rowan’s Welcome and other original music composed for the birth of other granddaughters.

If you would be interested in obtaining copies of the video finale’, graphical copies of the poems or possibly even a custom poem and video for your special mother please take my survey. If enough people ask for these products, maybe I can twist Phillip’s arm to make something really special.

I’m glad you visited my blog.

Marisa

Baby Shower Clipart

Baby showers are good fun as you can bring all your friends over to celebrate the arrival of the new baby. However, planning them does require great attention to detail and having a theme for your baby shower makes organizing the various details much simpler. With a proper theme decided, you can just make the other features of the baby shower fit the theme, and you don’t have to worry about arrangements further. The best way to go about planning your baby shower when you have a theme is to find a baby shower clipart which fits the theme, and is not too intricate.

Take the clipart you liked and then print it out in many different sizes and as many as you will need. You can also email the clipart to your husband’s office and make him print a few copies of the clipart in a bigger format. These large copies can then be pasted on some thick paper, cut out in the shape of the clipart, and used as logos on the walls. You can also ask the cake decorator to make your baby shower cake in the pattern of the clipart.

It is best to get cliparts from the internet, as there are millions of them available, and you’ll have a wide range to choose from. It’s better not to use a clipart you found in a clipart book because it will end up to be too much of work. You’ll first have to use a photo cropper to resize the image, and this will make the quality of the picture deteriorate and make it appear blurry. Choose a clipart which will work for all the effects you want to create.

Non-vector images are bitmaps which do not resize well, so it’s better to use vector cliparts. Choose simple, uncomplicated clipart, because they’re the ones which work the best. A line drawn in a single color will be good, because it will work in all sizes, and can also be changed very easily using simple graphics software. It also won’t be time-consuming.

You can resize the clipart to small, and print a repeating pattern onto paper which you can use as place mats, wrapping paper, origami, etc. Every aspect of your baby shower will thus fit the theme.

The end result of using such simple cliparts will be innovative and chic, leaving your guests to admire your handiwork when they come for your baby shower.

I’ve just been looking through my scrapbook and noticing that I kept many of my friends’ baby shower thank you notes. And I had to tell you about them. Well, the truth is, my girlfriends and I were talking about what we keep in our scrapbooks and when we all went home to check, you can imagine our surprise when we each found over a dozen baby shower thank you notes. Then we chatted about why we kept all these. And our answers were all the same - when somebody goes to all the effort to make a special thank you and to include pictures of shower/ baby, etc., we want to keep their creations. So, my friends elected “the baby shower queen” to share our favourite ideas with you. So, I hope you get a few ideas from what my friends and I have been doing over the years for our thank you notes.

First of all, you can add a creative touch to thank you notes you buy, OR you can design amazingly beautiful thank you notes from scratch. Just give your creativity a chance and you may find yourself designing a true thank you keepsake… one that your friends will keep in their scrapbooks.

Here’s our “5 Favorite Ideas”.

(Just a note: as you know, I am not a computer expert, so all my tips can be done without a computer or with one.)

IDEA #1 USE BABY’S PICTURE OR A SHOWER PICTURE AS THE BACKGROUND ON THANK YOU PAPER
Fancy Writing Paper With Personalized Background Image On It …..This can be done with or without your computer. If you’re like me, you do it without; one of my friends uses her computer and gets fantastic results.

First, select fancy writing paper, standard size (8.5 X 11 sheets), a kind that does not already have a background picture on its main writing surface. Make sure you buy paper that will feed through both a copy machine and your computer’s printer (in case you decide to compose and print your thank yous on your computer). Office or business stores sell prepackaged and by-the-sheet fancy papers. Online is another good source for papers, especially if it’s hard for you get to the store or if you live in a small centre where fancy paper selections may be limited.

Next, choose a picture that would make a nice background on your fancy writing paper. Select one from the shower or something that reflects the shower’s theme. If baby was at the shower, her picture on the background is as good as it gets! Whether you have your picture copied onto your fancy paper as a background, or you do it on your computer yourself, just make sure it is light like a background, so you can write your thank you over top of it. The “wow’s” you’ll get will be well worth the effort.

Now with your background picture copied or printed onto your sheets of fancy paper, you are ready to hand-write or print your thank you notes. Do it right over your background picture of baby or shower theme, or whatever else you selected. Awesome!

IDEA #2 MAKE A COLLAGE OF PARTY PICTURES AS THE OUTSIDE COVER OF YOUR THANK YOU NOTES
This is a fun idea and people always like to have pictures from a party they attended! Get a bit of help from your local print shop, or do this all on your computer. Don’t opt to do this on your computer, unless you have a good printer and scanner.

Select your favourite 6 to 12 pictures from the shower. I have only done this using actual prints. I’m sure there are settings on most computers to make an electronic collage, but this is beyond me. So, I won’t try to explain how to do this on your computer, but rather I’ll tell you how I do this with the help of my local print print shop. I cut and paste the pictures into an attractive collage, sized to one side of 8.5 X 11 paper. Next I go to my local print shop and get colour copies of the collage printed onto one side of fancy paper that will show off the pictures and fold smoothly in half (don’t fold until a bit later).

If you are writing your notes by hand, fold each collage (collage on the outside) in half across the width of the paper (outside 8.5 X 5.5) and write your note inside. If you are going to do your notes on the computer, compose then print each onto the blank side (your note will be inside and your collage on the outside). Then fold your page in half. (I find it easier to feed an unfolded sheet of paper through my printer).

Note-your collage can be placed horizontal or vertical on your paper, depending on how you plan to print or write you note inside. (horizontal or vertical). Be unique. Let your creativity be your guide.

IDEA #3: BUY PICTURE FRAME CARDS AND USE A PICTURE OF BABY OR A PICTURE FROM THE SHOWER
The front of the card looks like a frame and all you add is that one special picture.
Try this one (I have a few friends who use picture frame cards every Christmas and put their family picture in it. Of course I keep all these, so it is fun to see how much their children grow and change every year).

I started to think “why not use this for a baby shower thank you”. So, one of my friends did. She got cards with nice, summery frames on the front, because her shower was in June. She chose a different picture for every guest’s card, and everybody was thrilled. This one is simple and worth trying.

IDEA #4: (THIS ONE IS MY PERSONAL FAVORITE) THANK YOU BOOKMARKS
Make thank you bookmarks - this is awesome fun. I know, I have made bookmarks to mark a few special celebrations. For baby’s shower, you can personalize each bookmark and make it your thank you card, or you can send a bookmark with your thank you note.
If you are a scrapbooker, you’ll probably have lots of ideas and supplies for this one. If you had a special baby shower poem, a bookmark is a great way to share it with everybody. These can be done by hand or, if you’re into computers, some softwares have set-up for bookmarks. For a special effect, laminate your bookmarks. Who wouldn’t keep and use such a great little thank you?

IDEA #5: PERSONALIZE PURCHASED THANK YOU CARDS LIKE THIS
All this creativity a bit too much for you? Then buy your thank you notes. Try for something elegant and different. Then do something different. Add a personal touch to your notes by including a mini picture collage (4X6 or whatever size will fit in your card) from the shower, or a c.d. of pics from the shower or even a bookmark.

Hope we helped by giving you a few ideas on baby shower thank you notes. I’d love to know. My girlfriends are going to be wanting to know, as well. If you have a minute, leave me a comment and let me know.

Thanks for reading.

Marisa

Diaper cakes are a brilliant center piece for any shower and they often are used to establish the theme of the whole party. They have a singular importance for most baby showers so you have to take the time to plan them properly.

You can certainly purchase a ready-made baby shower cake, a diaper cake, but there’s always something more personality about making your own cake, whether it’s with batter or without, as in this case. Check back and stay tuned-in for my recommendation:o)

If you’re trying to think of fun games to play at a baby shower, baby shower bingo is a definite winner.

I have an ongoing poll on my baby shower bingo site which shows that 88% of people have played bingo at a baby shower before. It’s one of those classic games that everyone loves, and since most people know how it’s played, it’s an easy and fun choice.

Although you can try to create the bingo cards yourself, I suggest you buy a pre-made kit or ones that you can print out from your computer. They are inexpensive and can be ordered and downloaded online in minutes.

Besides, the time you save by buying the bingo cards can be used to find cool prizes for the winners!