Sports Themed Baby Shower

I hosted a baby shower for one of my good, college friends with the help of the mom-to-be's sister over the weekend.  It was a sports themed baby shower for little Nolan who will arrive in the next few weeks.  Both Mom and Dad are huge sports fans and it seemed to fit the family just right.

All of the food that was served was something you'd find at a tailgate:

• Pulled Pork Sliders
• Pigs in a Blanket
• 7-layer Dip
• Buffalo Chicken Dip
• Desserts

The shower was from 2-5pm so there wasn't a great need for food.  We expected most guests to have eaten before they arrived.

Mom-to-be doesn't like a lot of frills and attention, so we aimed to keep the shower low-key and intimate, we had less than 20 people.

My favorite part of preparing for the shower was making the individual serving 7-layer dips.  How cute are these?

Please excuse the cheese all over the table!  Our 2 person assembly line was pretty fast paced and now and then we'd miss with some of the cheese.  Oops.

We made the quac the night before with fresh avocados, onion and garlic.  That was the bottom layer followed by refried beans, sour cream, mild salsa, cheese and black olives.  So technically it's only 6 layers, but we didn't need lettuce.  They were the PERFECT size.

One of our friends in California made an adorable banner for the party.

Just perfect.  She also created a little booklet of "Wishes for Nolan" for everyone to fill out 10 wishes for the new baby.  I wanted to make Mom-to-be cry and we succeeded.  It was a great guest book as well.  

Being a baby shower, of course there were games.  We each guessed how big her belly was, guessed baby foods and there was a beer chugging contest out of baby bottles.  I'm proud to say, Stephen was the winner!  To keep with our theme, prizes were koozies from a local brewery.  

Each guest left with a package of Peanuts and CrackerJacks.  Just in time for Braves Season!  

It was great having the shower at the Mom's house because there wasn't any lugging of gifts, we could decorate how we wanted and it was casual.  The downside was that Mom-to-be was pretty stressed out.  I felt bad that she wanted to be so involved. I just wanted her to be able to relax and enjoy the party.  Next time, I'll insist that the party not be at the house.  All in all, a fantastic baby shower.  The best gift of the day - Mom-to-be was given one of her baby books from when she was a baby.  She remembered it instantly and tears were flowing from the whole family.  What a great mom to have saved such an important book.