Baby Nora's Book Themed Shower

 A few weeks ago Mom & I threw Lisa & Shawn a shower for Baby Nora.  Lisa doesnt like pinks and stuff but I couldnt really think of a theme so off to pinterest I went.  Thank goodness for pinterest, I seriously dont know how I would live without it anymore :)  Also let me just say that Lisa should be happy that I no longer work or else she would not have had a shower.  I think we determined we would throw this shower a few days after Thanksgiving, giving us about 2 to 3 week to plan (it was the 17th).

Anyway, I was pinning away to get ideas and couldnt find anything so I just decided we would do a shower in the colors of Nora's nursery (purple, green, little bits of blue) and maybe throw in a tad bit of pink since she is a girl after all.  Well as I was finding some cute things I saw a shower that was all about children's books, where you matched a book to a food item, and considering how many children's books we have between the three of us and how much we all like to read, I knew I had found the theme.

Most of the matches of food & books I found directly on pinterest but there were a few we tweaked and I think 2 that we added based on things (or books) we knew Lisa (and also myself and Mom) really liked.  Oddly enough we had to buy 4 books that we didnt have, but 3 of them we swore we had but just couldnt find, so I am sure one day we will find them and then I will get the extra copies we purchased for the shower!  We also have a ton of matching stuffed animal and book combos that we had on standby but we had so many book/food combos that we didnt have the room, so in the end we only used the stuffed animals if we had food combos too (except curious george because he was too big to fit on the table!)

The Dessert Table

This is one we added on our own, Lisa & I both LOVE Dunkin Donuts Munchkins so I knew we had to have them at the shower.  After a brief amazon.com search and a google search I found out there was no children's book about donut holes but there was 3 about donuts and one was from the "if you give a mouse a cookie" line which I have a lot of, so it seemed the perfect fit.  We also ordered only a small amount of the actual donut holes and I think they were consumed only by our family and none by the guests, their loss :)

Mini Moon Pies for Goodnight Moon.  They make mini chocolate ones too but every time we went to buy them they were out of stock (who knew so many people liked moon pies), so we just went with all banana ones.

Beautifully decorated cupcakes (ha ha) for Harold and the Purple Crayon.  I really liked this one, I thought it was a very clever idea (so thanks again pinterest!)

Madelines for Madeline.  You cant really tell but they are displayed in a Madeline lunchbox that I had as well :)

Then we had the snacky food table (very professional name, my many years in catering has evidently paid off)!  We loved the NORA dishes we found online and we filled those we colored Sixlets (one of our favorite candies EVER!).  I think they still have a container full still at home, we werent sure how many we needed and we got just a tad bit too many :)

We went all out on the If You Give A Mouse A Cookie station.  As you can see we had a matching stuffed animal (it actually goes with a nicer newer version of the book but it was bigger so it didnt fit on the table), some chocolate chip cookies, and we had glass bottles with matching paper straws filled with Starbucks Frappucinos and Milk (which was not poured when the picture was taken).  It was supposed to all be milk but it is expensive to order glass bottles online so instead we purchased a case of Vanilla Frappucinos at Costco (which Mom, Eric & I all love), and made custom stickers (to go with the invite I made) and covered the labels with the stickers.  The front said "Baby Nora" and the back said "Lisa & Shawn".  I could have just ordered ready made stickers from Etsy but I though I could do this myself.  Well I did and they turned out ok but I think I needed a shiny printable sticker, the ones that look like avery labels just dont hold the color as well as you would like once they were on the bottle.  So while I did enjoy making the invite and the stickers if it came down to it again I might just consider paying the $20 or whatever and get them from etsy.

Cheetos for Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse.  This was one I learned from pinterest having never read the book myself (Mom had however).  Evidently the teacher eats cheese puffs, but we like Cheetos in this family so any excuse to have them at the shower I was going to take.

Mulit-colored Swedish Fish for One Fish...

A veggie tray for The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  Instead of buying premade dip I found a super yummy and easy recipe from pinterest (and made it with low fat sour cream and olive oil may to cut out a bit of the fat), check it out:  Easy Ranch Dip from "5 Minutes for Mom"

Noisy Nora was one of our favorite books growing up, we always said that Lisa was just like Nora.  Now I dont think they got the name Nora from this book but considering how much we love it and that it was a shower for Nora we had to incorporate it somehow.  They dont really talk about food so instead we had an image put on a small cake as a centerpiece for the table.

This is another one we added because I am sure not many people have heard of this book, but it was again one of Lisa's favorites.  Its written by Marc Brown (the guy who wrote Arthur but before he did that) and its just a silly book about where you wouldnt find pickles.  One of the lines says you wont find them on a Christmas Tree and now both Lisa & I have a pickle ornament on our trees :)  This book was soooo worn it wouldnt stand  up!   Plus I think pickles at a baby shower are kinda funny, dont they say thats what every pregnant women craves?  I never have but Lisa did early in her pregnancy!!

Some fruit for Curious George.  Yes, we probably should have bananas since he is a monkey but they get brown easily and we were going to make some chocolate covered ones but decided instead to do some nice strawberries and pineapple with a delicious fruit dip from pinterest Creamy Fruit Dip from "The Country Cook" and then come apples with the yummy (and store bought) caramel dip that I am currently in love with!!

Then we had more food scattered around the living room or kitchen.  The shower was in the evening (after work for most people) so we wanted to not have only snack food but some more substantial items as well.

Goldfish and a Brown Bear for Brown Bear Brown Bear.  As you can tell this was on an end table in the living room, perfect for Logan, and I believe he was the only one that ate these, and for all I know he might have had the entire bowl of fish :)

Ham Sandwiches on Sweet Rolls and Green Deviled Egg Dip for Green Eggs and Ham.  Most of the other showers made deviled eggs with green yolk but while I love deviled eggs they are a pain to make and we had a lot of other stuff to do, so instead I used a deviled egg dip I found a long time ago on pinterest (that we made for thanksgiving) that was super easy and a big hit.  I actually used 2 awesome pins for this.  I made the eggs in the oven (Make Hard Boiled Eggs in the Oven from "The Burlap Bag") which was sooo easy its crazy, and it also made them easier to peel because they all had an air bubble at the top so you just cracked that and then peeled from there.  And then the dip which is AMAZING (only if you like deviled eggs).  This time we left off the paprika on the top since we dyed the eggs green but otherwise use it, and be warned, this stuff is addicting (Deviled Egg Spread from "The Cutting Edge of Ordinary")

Another one we added, we really wanted to have chicken salad croissants but as far as we knew they werent mentioned in a book, so we just used the awesome Teddy Bears Picnic book from our childhood.  They go on a picnic and have lots of snacks, and who wouldnt want chicken salad on a picnic.  We loved this book as kids, it had a record that played the song so this is one of the books that we dont read, we sing :)

Meatballs for Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (Buffet Meatballs from "Taste of Home").  Also a huge hit and sooo easy to make, we made them again on New Years.  If you do this recipe I followed some of the comments and used grape jelly instead of grape juice, a lot of people suggested that change, I dont know what it would have tasted like otherwise but considering how good they were I would just go with it!  Another note on this one, a lot of people now know about this book because of the movie, not us, we knew about it long before the movie, just want to put that out there :)

Polar Express Hot Chocolate with the Polar Express (From "Honey and Fitz")  We made this again on Christmas and have lots of faith in it but are still trying to tweak it.  When we made it at the shower it was soooo sweet that you had to add extra milk to tone it down (and we couldnt use whipped cream or the cool whip marshmallows I made), we thought it was because I purchased milk chocolate chips instead of bittersweet (which it calls for), so we made it again on Christmas and tried it with semi-sweet chips (cause we cant find bittersweet ones) and then it was soooo rich we again could barely drink it.  We think next time we will cut the amount of sweetened condensed milk in half and see what that does.  When we went to get out the book for this Lisa realized that in their house they have like 4 copies of this book (and I have yet another), no clue why we have so many copies, it just shows how much we love to buy books!!!

Another one we had to throw in there, we had a huge set of Sesame Street books when we were young but I think this was our favorite (or in the top 3) of them.  So we just put out a little Bert & Ernie as decor along with a few packets of oatmeal (again just as decor).

Depending on the time of year you could also do fresh blueberries for this, but in the winter you will pay a premium for them, plus we already had fruit, so instead we just made some mini blueberry muffins to go along with Blueberries for Sal.

Overall the shower was a big hit, everyone loved the food (even though we had sooooooooooooo much leftovers) and Lisa enjoyed the night and got some great gifts for baby Nora.  I am going to get her the gift opening pictures I took today or this weekend and I'm sure she will post some to her blog (probably not all cause I got a few were she is making some funny faces).