If you’re like many adults, the last time you wrote a thank you card may have been after your wedding. Now here you are, pregnant, hormonal and so big you’re about to pop, and you have a large list of baby shower attendees and gift-givers to thank.

This is only the start—you’ll receive presents after the baby is born, too. From there, it doesn’t end: baptism, birthdays, holidays. I do believe in sending thank you notes for every occasion and teaching children to do the same from a young age.

My nephews send thank you notes to us without fail for every occasion that we give them a gift, and those cards receive places of honor on our refrigerator. It’s been fun to watch them evolve from notes written by their mom, to the simple words “thank you” in big blocky letters they wrote themselves as kindergarteners, to the personalized, heartfelt notes they now send as young adults.

Thank yous are important, but I digress. Some etiquette experts say you have as long as six months after an event to send thank you notes. The rule of thumb I’ve always adhered to is two months. Unless you have 1,000 people at your gala event, there’s really no reason to take six months to send a thank you note.

But do yourself a favor and get those baby shower thank you notes out as soon as possible, so you don’t create a backlog and find yourself with a long list of cards to write and a crying infant in the other room. If at all possible, get your shower “thank yous” out before the baby is born.

It all begins with the list. If you send Christmas cards every year, you probably already have all your important family addresses well-organized. If not, you may have put together an address list for your shower—or whoever hosted the shower did it for you, in secrecy. Get that list! It will make your life so much easier and keep you from having to re-invent the wheel.

Our article about Baby Shower Ideas recommends having each guest fill in their own name and address on thank you card envelopes as they leave, which is certainly a great idea if the host of the shower thinks to provide thank you cards for the mom-to-be in advance. (And what a thoughtful idea!)

With your address list in hand, you’ll also need the list of gifts you received and who gave them to you. Hopefully, one of your friends at the shower wrote all this information down as you opened presents and everyone ooh-ed and ahh-ed over the adorable onesies and baby blankets.

And, of course, you need thank you cards! For round-two of gift-giving, after the baby is born, you may want to have cards printed with the baby’s picture on it or simply include a wallet-size photo with the card. If the baby isn’t born yet, it might be fun to include a sonogram picture (especially if you have one from a 3D sonogram), but there are also a wide variety of adorable thank you cards to choose from with no baby pictures required, online or at your local store.

Some Web sites and even drug stores will allow you to include your own special message pre-printed on the cards, but this is not enough! Each card should include a personalized, handwritten message, too, along with the gift-giver’s name, and your personal, handwritten signature. Visit the Tiny Prints Store for a great selection of Thank You Cards that you personalize or buy as-is!

The writing… for many people, that’s the hard part. What do you say? The important thing is to be heartfelt and personal. Mention the gift by name, and possibly even the way it will be used or something you especially like about it. “Thank you so much for the adorable outfit. It is my favorite color, and Ashley will be wearing it when we come home from the hospital together!”

If you know the baby’s name, it’s fine to use it, even if the baby isn’t born yet. Don’t forget to sign the card from both yourself and your husband, even if the shower was thrown in your honor. If you feel weird signing a card from an unborn baby, you can definitely skip that, but some mothers think it’s a cute touch.

In addition to commenting personally and positively on the gift, be sure to thank the person for attending the celebration, as well. Let them know you appreciated their presence, not just their present!

What if a gift is positively awful and you plan on heading right back to the store to make an exchange? (Or they didn’t check your registry and you received a duplicate.) Find something nice to say, but don’t be phony. Let the person know you appreciate the thoughtful gift, and emphasize how nice it was to see them at the shower. If you received two of the same item, comment on each as if it were the only one you received; the gift-giver doesn’t have to know whose Diaper Genie went back to the store and which one is sitting in the nursery right now.

Finally, be sure to send an extra special card, and maybe even a small gift, such as a box of chocolates or a scented candle, to the host or hosts of the shower. Let them know you appreciate how much work goes into planning such an event, and how much it meant to you. Don’t forget to thank them for their gift, as well!

Writing thank you cards is not difficult or scary and, in fact, it should give you a warm feeling inside, as you reminisce about the good times you had at your shower and all the love (and presents) you received! You don’t have to be Shakespeare or Miss Manners to write a good thank you card. Take time to truly appreciate the thought, expense, attention and care that went into each gift, and this gratitude will be reflected in every word you write.

This baby shower game is very popular at showers and is great for everyone at the party, even children who can read and write. Before the day of the party, select as many words as you want that are related to pregnancy and babies, no less than 25 is recommended. Now, the fun part is to scramble the letters so that they are no longer in the right order.

For example, the words that you scramble would include: breastfeeding, rattle, baby, ball and these could become: ngstbrieedaef, ttrela, bbya, albl or any other combination you want. Vary the length and the difficulty of the words when making the scramble.

Set a time limit of approximately five minutes and the person who unscrambles the most words within the allotted time wins the game and the prize.

Do you have a favorite baby shower game not listed?  Please comment!

For this game you need to purchase about 10 – 12 bottles of baby food. Make sure that you get different flavors that look the same; this is especially important if you decide to go with the taste or smell version of the game without using blindfolds. You will also need to remove the labels from each bottle and write down the number alongside the correct contents of the bottle on a piece of paper.

One version of the Guess the Baby Food game and one that can be quite hilarious is to do the taste test. This game can be played with or without blindfold, as this increases the level of difficulty and the fun. It is common knowledge that bottled baby food is not something the average adult likes. For this version of the game some baby food is placed in plastic spoons and the guest or mom-to-be tastes the food and tries to guess what it is. The look on the faces of the persons doing the tasting is priceless and will bring life to any baby shower.

In addition to the taste version, guests can be blindfolded and given jars of baby food to smell and guess what it is. Another version is to just let the invitees try to look at the sealed jar of baby food and guess what it is. With the latter version the sealed jars and the list with the numbers indicating what each jar contains is given to the mom-to-be for future use.

Do you have a favorite baby shower game not listed?  Please comment!

For this game you need to get the following items:

• Bingo cards (these can be pre-printed with words that are associated with babies, e.g. changing table, diaper, nappies. The design of regular bingo cards can be used, so the “B” line would have only items to do with feeding, “I” to do with names etc.)
• Markers to mark the cards
• Papers marked with things associated with babies and pregnancy – make sure that all the words on the cards are included. Place these folded papers into a bag or deep container.

Each guest is given a bingo card when they arrive for the party. Once the game begins, the host or anyone else acts as the caller. The caller’s job is to pull the strips of paper from the container and call out what is written on it. Guests will mark that word off their bingo card. The first person to mark off a line of words based on the type of bingo being played, calls out “bingo”. This person is the winner of the game. Guests can play for just fun, or to get more interaction, small tokens can be used as prizes.

Type of bingo: Before the game, the caller will state what type of bingo is being played such as ‘full house”, that is, all the squares on the card must be filled or ‘corner to corner”. Regular bingo players can make suggestions.

Version 2: Each guest is given a blank bingo card and is asked to write down what types of gifts they think the mom-to-be will be getting. As she opens the presents, the guests tick off the correct answers on their card. The first person to tick all the guesses on the card wins the game by calling out “bingo”.

Version 3: Again this can be played like a regular bingo game, and the numbers on the bingo cards should ideally be representative of the number of persons at the party. Therefore if invitations were sent to 25 persons, the numbers on the bingo card should not go above 25.

Each guest is then given a number between 1 and 25 to place on their gifts which are placed on a table. The mom-to-be will select gifts in no particular order and call out the number on the gift and guests will mark this off on their cards if it is there. The first person to fill in a line vertically or completely fill in the card, depending on the rules, wins the game by calling out the word, “bingo”.

Do you have a favorite baby shower game not listed?  Please comment!

This baby shower version of “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” is just as fun and can really bring life to a party. Anyone can join in, women, men, children, even the mom-to-be can safely take part in this game. For the game you will need to get the following beforehand:

• A nice life-sized picture of a baby

• Drawings of a pacifier – you will need one for each guest. Since this is easy to do you can opt for excess in case some guests want more than one try.

• Blindfolds – you can create blindfolds from paper or get scarves or even ask each guest to take their own material or sleep mask to use.

• Tape to use on the drawings of the pacifiers. Tape is safer than pins.

The objective is to have guests take turns trying to place the pacifier in the baby’s open-mouth while blindfolded. The person who comes closest to the baby’s mouth with the pacifier wins the game.

There are many variations to this game, so use your imagination. Some suggestions include:

• Instead of trying to pin the pacifier, other objects can be used instead such as baby bottles, sippy cups, even a thumb.

• Use an image of a mother with hands positioned as if holding a baby, but of course, the baby is missing. The game is to cut out images of babies and try to stick them into the cradled arms of the mommy. Really creative persons can have the mommy lying in bed, sitting in a chair or standing – the choice is wide open.

• Another nice variation is ‘pin the belly button’ with a picture of a pregnant tummy minus a belly button and guests try to place the belly button in the right position.

Do you have a favorite baby shower game not listed?  Please comment!

This fun game is a variation of the popular Price is Right Game. Before the start of the game buy between 15 and 20 different baby-related items – make sure to keep the receipts with the price.

Write down the price of each item and place it face down under each item. Make sure than none the guests sees the price when you are doing this. Give each item a number – make this visible. Next you will also need to place the same numbers in a container and have each guest pull out a piece of paper with a number.

Once the container is empty have each guest write down on the paper what they believe the right price of the item is. The guest whose guess is closet to the right price wins the game.

There are many variations of this fun game. Here are two twists that can be added to provide some variety.

1. Show each guest the items and ask them to write down the prices. Once everyone has written down the price of each item, compare prices and the person who has guessed the prices of the most items correctly wins.

2. Decide beforehand the rules in terms of ‘closest price”. Is it the nearest price without going over, or is it the nearest price within two dollars of the correct price. This means that the winner is the person whose guess is anywhere from the correct price to two dollars more or less than the right price.

Suggested baby items include:

• Pacifier

• Feeding bottle

• Rattle

• Diaper pins

• Wet wipes

• Stuffed toy

• Bottled food

• Hair brush and comb

• Wash rags

Do you have a favorite baby shower game not listed?  Please comment!

For this fun baby shower game, which is also great for children’s parties you need to get a nice gift and wrap it in many different layers of wrapping paper. Try to wrap the gift in as many layers as the number of guest you expect at the party. Make sure that each layer of wrapping paper is different so that it is easy to differentiate one layer from the other. To make the game really fun, add small gifts in between each layer. The gifts do not have to be expensive and can include a cute pen or some candies.

Have each guest sit on a chair in a circle and start the music. The person holding the parcel when the music starts passes it to the person sitting beside them. The parcel is passed from guest to guest until the music stops. The tempo and length of time between stopping the music can be varied to make the game more exciting. The guest holding the parcel when the music stops starts removing as many layers of wrapping paper as they can. If they find a present it is theirs to keep, but they must stop and pass the parcel on to the next person as soon as the music starts again.

The parcel is passed around until the last piece of wrapping paper is removed. The guest who removes the last piece of wrapping from the parcel wins the game and gets to keep the gift or they can give it to the mom to be if they wish.

This is a fun game and can include all invitees at the party, women, men and children.

Note: In another variation of the game, each time the music stops, only one layer of wrapping paper can be removed.

Do you have a favorite baby shower game not listed?  Please comment!

by: Abigail Beal

Are you going to a baby shower? Gifts for babies are always so cute – here are some ideas to create gift wrapping that is just as adorable as the gift you are giving.

If you know the baby is expected to be a boy or a girl, sometimes it is fun to wrap a gift in “baby boy blue” or “baby girl pink” – but remember we have many other colors in the rainbow to choose from! Here are some other options to get your creative juices flowing.

Going to a shower and the mother is not sure if the baby is going to be a boy or a girl? Wrap the baby gift in white paper and tie the gift with two ribbons instead of one – use one pink and one blue. Tie the blue and pink ribbons together and tape to the back of the package. Then have the ribbon form a bow on the front of the package from the two colors of ribbon.

Want to add a cute topping to any baby shower package? Add a rattle, teething ring, baby mittens, hairbow, small picture frame, Christmas ornament or a small stuffed animal. All of these items can be fastened with the ribbon you tie the gift with – and these items can also be used by the baby.

Love teddy bears? Do a teddy bear gift wrap! Use gift wrap paper that has teddy bears on it, or a soft cocoa colored gift wrap paper. But a small teddy bear on the top of your package and tie with a brown or a white bow. You can often find teddy bear rattles or teething rings that have teddy bears on them.

Quack quack quack! Wrap with a duck theme! Use yellow paper or paper with ducks on it and tie with a large orange ribbon. Top your gift with a traditional yellow rubber duck.

For a pretty look for a spring baby shower consider a very floral look. Wrap a gift with floral or plain but colored paper. Use a green or purple ribbon and tie it in a bow. Top the package with some fresh spring flowers. Cut the stems of the flowers very short. Add the flowers the morning of the baby shower for best presentation.

Does the baby have an older sibling? Consider giving a small gift to this sibling. A new baby is often a hectic time and seeing their new brother or sister get so many gifts can sometimes be overwhelming, and leave many children feeling a little forgotten. Consider getting an older sibling a storybook or a stuffed animal as a special big brother/big sister gift.

About The Author
Abigail Beal © 2004 Abigail Beal a.k.a. “the Gift-wrap Goddess” teaches gift wrap in suburban New York. She is the author of 2 ezines: GiftWrapGoddessWraps and CreativeCraftsTeachers. To subscribe: groups.yahoo.com/group/CreativeCraftsTeachers/, groups.yahoocom/group/GiftWrapGoddessWraps/ contact: creativecraftsteachers@yahoo.com, giftwrapgoddess@yahoo.com

By Brenda McLean

There is nothing like seeing a surprised look on the mom-to-be! Surprise baby showers can involve a little extra work, a lot more secrecy, but they can also be a lot fun!

If your party goes as planned it will offer an unexpected and delightful surprise for your expectant mom. But, before you start planning consider the following:

Has the mom-to-be registered for baby gifts? If she hasn’t it will make gift purchasing much more difficult. You may need to list the help of her mother, sister or close friend to find out what she needs for the baby.

Is your expectant mom the type of person who enjoys surprises? If she isn’t you should stay away from this type of baby shower. You want this day to be special and enjoyable for your guest of honor.

Will it be difficult to enlist family and friends in keeping the secrecy? Let’s be honest, some people are better then others at keeping secrets. If you know someone close to her who tends to let secrets slip, it might not be worth the stress of trying. Some family members and guests may not support the idea of a surprise shower either.

Will arranging a cover story to ensure the mom-to-be will arrive on her special day be difficult? You would hate to go through all the trouble of planning a secret celebration only for the expectant mom to catch on to what is happening hours before the shower.

The job of planning the perfect surprise baby shower requires more than one person. You will need to enlist the help of those closest to your mom-to-be. Talk with her partner, mother, sisters and best friends. They will be able to help determine a good day and time for the surprise baby shower. As well as help get her to the shower on time, dressed appropriately, and with the least amount of suspicion.

The location of your celebration plays an important role when planning a surprise baby shower. Try to hold the party at a place the expectant mom normally visits and feels comfortable going to on a regular basis. A close family or friend’s home would be ideal. It will make creating a cover story for dropping by on the day of the party less suspicious. Remember to ask your shower guests to arrive early and park away from the house to ensure your guest of honor isn’t tipped off at the last minute.

The most often asked question is: “How do we get our expectant mom to the shower without raising suspicion?” Here are a few suggestions:

Involve her partner: Her partner could suggest a romantic evening out for the two of them before the new baby arrives. To lessen her suspicion, consider holding the shower at a public place, like a restaurant.

Plan the unexpected: Catch your expectant mom off guard by planning the shower at a non-conventional time. Such as in the morning or right after lunch.

Send a decoy: Have a close friend or family member take her to lunch on that day. While they are enjoying their meal, you can be welcoming the shower guests.

Keep in mind that you may want your expectant mom to know someone will be hosting a shower in her honor. You can keep her in the dark on the date, time and location. This way she won’t become upset thinking everyone forgot to throw her a baby shower.

About the Author:
Brenda McLean is a stay-at-home of two small children and is married to her husband Albert. Brenda is also the creator of http://www.your-baby-shower-guide.com/ A website providing in-depth information, fun ideas and useful tips to help guide you in your baby shower planning. Brenda and her family enjoy camping, watching movies and getting together with family and friends.

by: Adriana Copaceanu

No aspect of party planning is more crucial and sometimes mind boggling to a baby shower planner than selecting the baby shower theme. There are almost too many ideas available today, and often the host of a party finds themselves suffering apoplexy at the idea of selecting a baby shower theme.

A small amount of creativity however will be sure to generate success, regardless of the baby shower theme selected. Keep in mind that the mom to be’s happiness is perhaps the greatest priority. Not sure what theme to select? Worried about what might go over well with the guests? Turn to the expectant mom for guidance, and you are certain to come out a winner.

Selecting a baby shower theme should depend on just a couple of critical factors; For example, is the mother expecting a boy, girl, twins or more? Twins are the perfect “theme” for any party of a mother blessed with multiples. You could for example, in this instance offer guests two of everything, including cake!

In times of old a shower was only held for the first child. This tradition has changed however of late, and it isn’t uncommon for a mom to be to have a shower for each child, celebrating their uniqueness and the joy at bringing another new life into the world. Sometimes a variation of the same theme can be used at subsequent showers. Still struggling for ideas? Consider some of the following:

Teddy Bears: What child does not love plush, stuffed and furry teddy bears! Teddy bear themes can be used for male or female children. Napkins, tableware and similar style decorations are sure to be found with teddy bears on them.

Colors: Often a mom to be seeks out gifts and accessories that complement or match the color she has selected for baby’s nursery. You might consider a baby shower theme that matches the color scheme of baby’s nursery. Guests can also be clued in on the invitation, and invited to bring items that will complement the nursery or wardrobe of the baby to be.

Cartoon Characters: Many parents select well known characters to incorporate into their nursery theme and these are easily translated into a baby shower theme. Some ideas include Strawberry Shortcake, Hello Kitty, or Bugs Bunny for example.

Shapes: Some parents may decide on shapes or even objects such as lemons, fish, cubes, circles and triangles to decorate their baby’s nursery. Again, finding decorations and accessories for the shower that match this theme should prove beneficial and inexpensive.

No matter what baby shower theme you select, you are bound to find hundreds of items to complement the event, including decorations, favors and even gifts. Once the baby shower theme has been selected, as a planner the next most important task is setting about planning for the actual party and getting invitations out to the guests to be.

Traditionally, the shower is held at the home of the host; this is not always the case however, and exceptions to the rule might be welcome in some situations. Regardless of where you decide to throw the party, be sure to give guests enough advance notice to plan on attending. This usually requires three weeks to a month’s notice, as most people are already too busy in today’s society!

After selecting a baby shower theme, planning the party is easy. Once invitations have been mailed out and RSVP’s have been received, plan on spending some time making a list of food items that will be needed, decorations you plan on acquiring, settling on party favors and deciding on a few fun games to play. Once you have all of these items sorted out, everything else is bound to fall together and you and your guests are sure to have a delightful time celebrating mom to be!

About The Author
Adriana Copaceanu provides people with creative gift ideas that don’t blow the bank. Gift Baskets for Baby to Birthday and Beyond, are just some gift ideas you’ll find at her site: ACB Gifts And Baskets. Want regular reminders on gift-giving? Sign up for her free monthly newsletter at http://www.abcgiftsandbaskets.com/gift-news-signup.htm.