Baby shower ideas...

The baby shower today went really well! I think the mom-to-be enjoyed it, and that's the most important thing. But I've learned some things from hosting baby showers, so I thought I'd share...

- Polka dots are easy and cheap and festive. You get a lot of bang for your time and your buck. I have a pack of pastel paper that just keeps giving and giving and giving. I traced yellow and green circles with different sizes of cans in my pantry and cut them out, cutting through several pieces of paper at once. I put the dots on the table, taped them to my fireplace, put them on my coffee table, and taped a few to the door, in lieu of balloons on the mailbox.

- Colored bottles make a bouquet of flowers go a lot farther. Gerber daisies arranged this way can decorate a table and be put all over the living room. You can get clear and different colored bottles like these from Michaels for about a $1 a piece. And then you can use them to decorate your kitchen windowsill. I know I do. =)

- If you have small children, use their stuffed animals to decorate. I had a giraffe and a blue gorilla hanging from the china on my mantel and a stuffed dog on the coffee table.

- M&Ms look great in a wine glass. Your guests can just pick it up by the stem and pour the candies onto their plates.

- This is a great website for baby shower games. I used the baby bingo on here. One nice take on baby bingo is collecting all the items listed on the card, putting them in a basket, and letting the mom-to-be draw them out instead of call them out. I was missing a couple of things (like baby powder), so I printed out pictures of those from the internet.

- Different colors of grapes are really nice arranged around a special hunk of cheese. I saw a picture of a cheese platter laid out this way on Like Merchant Ships. It made it look at lot more fancy.

So those are my ideas. Anyone else care to share some other pretty ways to decorate for a party? I'm always open to suggestions...