Personalized Onesies

 In my experience, people enjoy baby showers for the socializing, food, and, of course, the opening of the presents (ooooh, how cute!!!). Less popular are the games. In fact, some guests loathe the games and just tolerate them to be a good sport. So when I was trying to come up with an activity for Ryan's shower, I tried to find something that would be engaging and wouldn't encourage guests to hide in the bathroom. Personalizing onesies seemed like the perfect idea - an activity and gift in one!

I bought several packages of plain white onesies in sizes from newborn to 12 months and pre-washed and dried them. Then I slipped cardboard pieces inside the onesies to hold the fabric taut and provide a hard surface (cake rounds worked well), and bought some fabric markers.

At the shower, guests were free to decorate on their own or collaborate. Above is a picture of some of the results, and below is Ryan in the onesie I made. Yes, it's self-serving, but you can't argue with its truth.

Diaper Cakes

I wanted to do something creative and fun for my grandson's baby shower, so when a co-worker brought this diaper cake as a gift for another instructor at work, I immediately knew I had to make one. The happy couple are starving students, so cute AND practical was a winning combination. Here is the result:

The diapers are from Target, and the blue and green spots were perfect to support a frog stuffed animal I had picked up earlier in a moment of I'm-gonna-be-a-grandma-so-I-have-an-excuse-to-buy-cute-things. The rosebud socks weren't as successful on my cake as they were on my co-worker's, I think because the colors don't read "flowers" but oh, well.

If you want to construct your own, there are a plethora of tutorials online (click here for a good one), plus here are a few tips: roll each diaper and use a white rubber band to hold it in place. Use a dowel down the middle of the cake to hold the whole thing together (if you don't use cardboard circles under each layer, which I didn't), and buy a bigger size diaper than newborn, because mom and dad might want to admire your handiwork for a while before disassembling it.