Halloween Baby Shower Help

October 8, 2009 9:38 AM

Baby shower help please? I'm throwing a baby shower for my sister-in-law in a couple weeks. It's going to be a co-ed Halloween party basically, but also there will be baby presents. How can I incorporate babies & Halloween in the food and decorations? Cheaper is better, as I'm about to be laid off soon!
posted by chiababe to grab bag (9 comments total)

If you have skill in making unusual cakes and your sister-in-law is the right type of person, i would suggest and alien chest bursting cake.

For decorations, maybe a lot of those little, baby pumpkins around a big mom pumpkin?
posted by obol at 9:46 AM on October 8

Or a mom pumpkin cake and baby pumpkin cupcakes? (This can also solve chocolate/vanilla cake disputes). Really, you could do mom-and-baby anything: monsters, ghosts, zombies - depends on your decoration-fu skill level.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:54 AM on October 8

Jelly babies!

Pacifier shaped candy.

Make everyone dress up as the baby version of someone famous.
posted by like_neon at 10:05 AM on October 8

I made a pink sherbert punch for a baby shower (for a girl), bought some cheap pink teething rings, froze them, and floated them in the punch. Punch is also a good thing for halloween (could even make one black/dark purple and one orange punch).

I also just made ice cream cone cupcakes for my own birthday the other day, and they came out looking really really cool. Make normal cake batter, fill flat-bottomed wafer cones about 3/4 full, bake until toothpick comes out clean (20 mins ish), ice and decorate. They are REALLY EASY and look really really cool. You can be creative with the frosting colors and decorations to reflect either baby or halloween.

Buy cute baby clothes and little baby socks, some clothes pins, and a clothesline and use that to decorate a window or along a wall (you can kind of drape it like swag if that makes sense). You could buy halloween or fall colored baby clothes - yellows/oranges/browns.

Other food stuff...candy corn/candy pumpkins. You could just have bowls of Halloween candy (mini stuff) too.

This be obvious, but I LOVE just doing loads of google image searches for anything that pops into my mind to give me ideas for just about any baking/party/decorating thing.
posted by peanut butter milkshake at 10:55 AM on October 8

Give her a copy of Mommy? !!!

I have this book (got it before having a baby) and I love it! The paper engineering on this is fabulous and it is definitely Halloween appropriate.

You could probably find posters of some of the pages to put up around for decorations, too.
posted by zizzle at 11:25 AM on October 8

Depends on the personality of the mom. Is she going to think you're gross if you do cupcakes with gummy worms coming out of them? Are you going for super cutesy Halloween or kinda grown-up spooky Halloween?

No matter what she likes, I would totally use a mummy theme. I'd do a pregnant mummy cake. Super easy to decorate. For the strips of cloth, just do a wide tip with white or cream colored icing and go across the cake. Here's an example of the icing but do a whole body (about 1/2 way down the page) and make a small bowl shaped belly on top! You could probably find a mummy pan at Michael's this time of year. If not, just a sheet cake and sculpt it.

Martha Stewart also has a crapload of ideas for party stuff that might be perfect for a shower and they're usually pretty DIY.

Have fun!
posted by Sophie1 at 3:42 PM on October 8

She is looking for this to be a non-cutesy sort of affair. Thanks for all the suggestions everyone! I really like the mummy cake idea, but I'm not sure how I would make the body shape. Just carve it out of a half sheet cake maybe? I'll probably add a baby bump to the mummy too.
posted by chiababe at 4:26 PM on October 8

In terms of decorations, I don't think you have to go crazy if you're on a budget. Some streamers, "spider webs" with spiders (I usually buy spider rings, cut off the ring part and they stick right on to the web or lay on tables), maybe some big and small (mom and baby) cutouts of ghosts, pumpkins, etc. Also table cloths and of course coordinating plates/plasticware.

Oriental Trading usually has the cheapest decorations. Just make sure you stick with the basics - it's easy to go overboard on that site! If you don't have any coupons and can't find any online, memail me and I have some 20% off coupon codes.
posted by radioamy at 5:09 PM on October 8

If you want to play a game you could do a twist on the "baby pictures" game by having everyone submit pix of them as kids in halloween costumes!
posted by radioamy at 5:09 PM on October 8