Sugar & Spice Baby Shower - Memory Baskets

Sugar and Spice Baby Shower  For my friend's baby shower, I chose a sugar-and-spice theme to honor her baby girl.  A "neopolitan" color scheme of brown, vanilla, and pink was perfect -- and, there are plenty of cute papers to choose from in these colors to print your invitations.  "Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of...help us welcome _____'s new baby with all that little girls need..." was the invitation lead.   

Decorations were the most fun -- use cinnamon sticks, whole star anise, raw sugar (or brown), white sugar, and pink sanding sugar to create amazing decorations.  I used square vases to create several different arrangements.  I used cinnamon sticks to surround some of the vases, tying off with a vanilla colored ribbon, then filled the vase with pink dahlias.  In other vases, I used the different sugars a la "sand art" (layering each in the vases as stripes), placed scented candles and star anise on top.  The effect was yummy.  This theme really lends itself to a brunch, tea, or dessert buffet.  Cinnamon sugar french toast or coffee cake are sure to please. 

For drinks, try a spicy tea in the day or spiced wine in the afternoon.  A spinach salad with sugar-spice pecans or walnuts tossed in would be great, too, or perhaps a butternut squash soup.  For baby shower fun, set out two baskets and ask guests to write a favorite memory of the mom for either the "sugar" or "spice" basket -- to be placed in an "everything nice" album and given to her daughter in the future.  The sugar basket is for examples of mom's best qualities in action, the spice basket is for those moments when she kicked up her heels. 

Another fun and useful idea is ask guests to draw a picture or write a phrase that will be scanned into the computer, and printed (in mirror image remember!) on transfer paper to be ironed-on to plain white onesies that are truly one of a kind and made with love.  New moms can never have enough onesies!  But purchase a few in each size to keep the supply going for a full year.  It is always nice to ask guests to write their name and address on a stamped envelope for thank yous, to spare busy new moms an extra task.  I purchased some personalized thank you notes in the color scheme for the guest of honor. 

Favors can be simple or more elaborate.  To keep things budget-friendly, consider a gift of loose tea tied up in a plain muslin bag with a cinnamon stick and a sugar stick (found at specialty cooking/food stores) tied to the bow. If you have a bit more to spend, consider china teacups to hold the above bag of tea.    Hope you enjoy this fun party idea!