As some of you may know, I hosted a baby shower for my sister a few weeks ago. I was so thrilled to be able to throw a baby shower for my little sister's first pregnancy. She made it a little difficult on us though when it came to picking the theme because she has decided not to find out the gender of the baby. Which means no pink or blue for the shower. And gender neutral showers can be a little more challenging to plan.
Luckily, we had a flash of brilliance and came up with the Kentucky Derby baby shower. My sister LOVED horses when she was younger and, by sheer coincidence, we actually had the baby shower on May 3, the day of the Kentucky Derby. It was like it was meant to be!
Once we had the theme down, we found these adorable invitations on Etsy.
Working from the invite, our colors for the shower were mint and gold with a touch of red {mostly in red roses}.
I set out our wooden rocking horse with a wreath of red roses around his neck to welcome guests to the baby shower.
We had a little welcome table in the entryway where we asked guests to fill out advice cards for the mother-to-be. We had them place the finished cards in my sister's old play barn.
We made a diaper cake and wrapped the layers with moss ribbon {moss to mimic the greens of the track} and colored ribbon in the colors of the shower. I spray painted little plastic rocking horses {that usually come in pink or blue} in mint and used them to decorate the cake. For our cake topper, we found a cute little stuffed horse and made him a little wreath of tiny rosettes.
We also had roses in a mint julep imitation vase to decorate the front table.
Speaking of mint juleps, we had delicious mint juleps {non-alcoholic, for the lady of honor} to drink.
For those that preferred their drinks a little more spirited, we provided a Southern Peach Kiss drink.
In true Southern form, we had mason jars as our drinking glasses with black and white straws.
For the menu, we had traditional Hot Browns but we made them mini. These little sandwiches were so good! Everyone loved them. {Be sure to look for them on the blog later on!}
We also had Southern Pulled Pork sandwiches,
spinach salad with goat cheese and walnuts {we made sure the goat cheese was pasteurized}
fruit salad with cream dip,
and chicken salad with crackers.
For dessert, we had mini cherry cheesecakes {my sister's favorite dessert}
and my mom's friend made us some themed cookies in roses and cute hats.
We cheated a bit with the cake. We ordered a cake from a local grocery store, and asked for it to only be iced with white icing so we could decorate it ourselves. I bought some sugar sheets and ran them through my Silhouette to make the words and bought the icing roses from the store.
After eating, we played a couple of games. We made betting slips for the guests to fill out to guess the baby's gender, weight, delivery date, and all the other vital stats. I am keeping the slips until my sister has the baby and then we will send a prize to the guest who guessed closest. What's a Kentucky Derby shower without a little gambling?
I found the official Kentucky Derby logo and traced it with my Silhouette. Then I swapped Kentucky for "Kelly Tummy" {she loves a good play on words...we are alike that way}and Churchill Downs for "Baby Shower" with the date. I love being able to personalize things like that. And I made sure everyone knew EXACTLY what they were waging with this bet...their reputation. It brought the game to a whole new level.
We also played a game that I made up called Baby or Horse. We had a long list of names and the guests had to guess whether it was a horse name or a celebrity baby name. It was actually a very hard game. But really fun.
And of course, we voted for the fabulous hat. I loved the everyone wore a hat to the shower. It really added to the party and made it feel like we were at the races. Even my baby daughter wore an amazing headpiece.
For thank you gifts for the guests, we gave them rocking horse cookies, again made by my mom's friend.
My sister had a great time and I loved being about to shower her with a fun party to celebrate the upcoming birth of her first wee baby.
Sharing with these parties:
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