My sister-in-law and I had the honor of hosting our sister’s baby shower. You won’t believe where we did our shopping…the dollar store. I’m excited to share with you my tips and secrets on how to create a gorgeous Baby Shower on a Budget.
Baby Shower on a Budget
DECOR
Here’s where our frugal shopping paid off! Yup! You guessed it, we bought almost ALL of our decorations at the dollar store.
Look at the finished product! None of our guests would’ve believed that we decorated this shower on a dollar store budget.
Streamer and Tissue Paper Creations
After creatively decorating my staircase for my son’s Superhero party, I knew we HAD to do a similar idea for the baby shower.
{I’ve included Amazon links for your shopping convenience}
We decided on pink and white with a hint of green for the shower colors. Using pink, white and green streamers
Please excuse the lovely 90’s brass fixtures.
Streamer Waterfall
Using streamers
Balloon Garland
Amazing tip for how to hang balloons at the top of the window. The last time I did this I used tape and it was a mess! I was never fully satisfied at the outcome.
This time I used a long piece of ribbon and tied the balloons individually in a straight line. Attach the strand of balloons to a curtain rod with some tape.
Here are some pictures that my son took of me while I was putting together the balloons. Please excuse the baby bump…
This picture reminds me I need to do more bicep/tricep exercises. Oye.
Plastic Tablecloth Creations
Using dollar store tablecloths our talented mom turned my ugly brown chair into this!
She cut a pink and white tablecloth
We thought this was the perfect look for the guest of honor’s gift opening chair.
Using tablecloths as a backdrop for the wall where our sister would be sitting to open her gifts, created the best photo opp!
Look at these dollar store banners
The other two windows were decorated with balloons
Opting to not do helium balloons to keep the costs down, we instead decided to hang balloons
This was my ONE splurge for the decor. I found these adorable, pink, lantern balls
Baby Clothesline
Year ago, I once attended a baby shower where they displayed cute baby clothes
SET UP
Tables
Because of the size of our shower we decided on 2- 6 foot long fold out tables (I also use these regularly as my garage sale tables!). Mom rented chairs for only $1 each which was totally worth it since none of us collectively had enough matching chairs.
Using our dollars store plastic tablecloths
After that we laid down our place mats. Mom decided on these cute card stock
Can you believe that we almost didn’t use a place mat but then last-minute, my sister discovered these in Mom’s craft pile and thought they were perfect! Here’s a really cool tool that cuts pretty scalloped edges on paper.
Entryway
In the entryway, we placed a table with our party favors, advice jar
My daughter LOVED helping out! One of her jobs was to make sure each person placed a note of advice in the jar.
What we hadn’t planned on, and was a nice surprise, was our guest of honor reading the pieces of advice out loud at the end of the shower so all the guests could hear. It was so sweet and some were just hilarious!
Mom used her Cricut and cut these cute little onesies out of paper for the advice jar
Last minute, we displayed our guessing jar game on this table so that our guests could place their guess in the jar as they arrived. What worked out even better was to have my daughter walk around and collect the guesses from each guest after they were seated and chatting.
These were cute little feet that were cut from mom’s Cricut. The guests wrote their name and guess on them.
TABLE TOP SET UP
Mason jars, pink burlap, pink doily and pink ribbon were used to dazzle up our flower arrangement jars.
Here’s a peek at the adorable napkins that mom made. To make the napkins
We found the plasticware that looks like silverware at the dollar store too!
Most of the guests commented that the napkins
Vintage Glass
Deciding to use beautiful vintage glassware for our table settings was the absolute best idea that had the biggest impact! Our mom is queen of garage sales and has collected vintage glassware for years. She’s also queen of tea parties too and often uses this glassware for her parties. Some day soon I will blog about one of her fabulous tea parties!
Look at these adorable glass plates, and water goblets.
Vintage water pitchers
We sought the help from fellow Frappuccino drinkers and asked that they help us collect their empty glass frap bottles. We then washed, and peeled off the labels of the bottles.
Using a white doily, pink yarn and baby shower themed buttons, we created the most adorable glass drinking jars you’ve ever seen! Mom found these cute, pink straws at Hobby Lobby!
BABY SHOE FAVOR TUTORIAL
Our party favors were in the making LONG before any other plans had been made. It was partly inspired by something on Pinterest and mostly inspired by mom.
Go HERE to see the most adorable baby shower shoe favor tutorial step-by-step directions.
GAMES/PRIZES
To keep our costs down, we went to our closets to find what was new but unused that we could re-purpose for our prizes. It’s amazing what you can find at home that you’ve never used!
I also put together a gift bag full of stationary items from the bins at my local craft store. I’ve also seen practical, cost-effective items that would make perfect prizes at local big box stores!
Oops! My Water Broke!
My SIL purchased these cute little babies from her local craft store. We then placed them in ice-cube trays
Baby Bottle Bottoms Up!
We filled pink baby bottles
We of course, couldn’t JUST have a pink baby bottle. We had to add some white tulle, tied in a bow to make it pretty.
Here I am making sure that the bottle levels are equal. It would’ve been smart to just look at the ounce marks on the side. Oh well! This was more fun!
How Big is Mom-to-Be?
Using some pink ribbon that I had on hand we measured our guest of honor’s waist. Here’s the official Baby Shower Tummy Measure game. We kept it a secret as to how “big” her belly was. We walked around the room with ribbon and asked each guess to cut off their “guess” as to how “round” mom-to-be is. This was fun too! Most people were very generous and some were well… let’s just say, way off!
Candy Guessing Jar Game
As I previously mentioned, we had a candy guessing jar
FOOD
Keeping it simple yet delicious we set out to our local Costco and found an amazing chicken salad that we paired with croissants and yummy turkey pin wheel wraps.
We added a side pasta salad, fruit salad in a waffle cone and veggies in a baguette. Our guests loved the food and went back for seconds!
We scooped out the center of cucumbers and filled them with the chicken salad.
We used these pretty vintage glass cups
Our fruit salad was a mix of strawberries, grapes, melon and pineapple. We scooped our fruit into yummy waffle cones that we dressed up with some scrapbook paper.
Simply scoop out the center of the baguette and dropped in spinach dip. Here, we used carrot, celery and cucumber sticks for our veggies.
DESSERTS
Our dessert/coffee/tea bar was set up in the kitchen on the island.
We chose some homemade brownies that my sweet daughter cut out with a heart-shaped cutter
Our beautiful tea cup
Cake
My SIL has a very talented friend that makes cakes! She did an amazing job for us. Not only was the cake super cute it was DElicious!
Here’s a quick peek at how to turn a simple white cake stand into a “pretty in pink tulle” cake stand!
This cake stand has little holes/slots in it for threading either ribbon or tulle through it. Here’s a shot of mom dressing it up!
Thank you so much for reading! Not only was it important to me to share our journey to a beautiful baby shower for our sister but I wanted to paint a picture of how to create an adorable baby shower on a budget!
Happy baby shower planning to all!
If you’re like I was years ago and completely overwhelmed with the details and crafts, then you might be interested in my Baby Shower on a Dollar Store Budget e-Book that is complete with 8 video tutorials, 6 printables for planning budget, weekly checklist, shopping list and more! Read More about Baby Shower on a Dollar Store Budget e-Book HERE.
Looking for more baby shower inspiration…
Found your blog on Pinterest. The shower looked beautiful. I am planning my daughters baby shower and will definitely be using some of your ideas. Thanks for posting everything in such detail.
Thank you, Susan! I’m so glad you enjoyed it and found it useful.
You guys are soooo creative and craftsy, All the showers I have been to recently had taco trucks, DJ’s, rented venues, etc. Yours was far prettier and had the homeyness factor I happen to prefer, to say nothing of being much more cost effective.
Thank you, Barbara! You’re sweet.
Hi! I’m curious to know what the end total was? This is awesome!!
Thank you, Marci! The end total for decor was roughly $28 plus fresh flowers, and my $3 “splurge” with coupon at Hobby Lobby. We also used linens and glassware my mom had on hand, at no cost. 🙂
Love all of the tips and the shower is adorable! You have so many details and everything came together so cute. The wall with the clothes displayed is one of my favorite things! (Stopping by from Money Saving Mom)
Thanks, Ashley! I’m glad you found me from Money Saving Mom! Love your blog…btw. Your Watermelon Picnic Party was super cute. 🙂
Thank you so much! Appreciate you taking a peek. 😉
Ashley recently posted…6.12.15 // High Five for {the little things} Friday!
Thank you so look much for all the awesome ideas for a Baby Shower on a Budget but so awesome I am helping plan my Grand daughters Baby Shower for my great grand daughters arrival In March,
Hi Molly!
Congratulations on your new great-grandbaby! I am so happy you’ve found my Baby Shower on a Budget post helpful. Have fun planning!
Nice! You should find everything that you need to create a perfect baby shower. So you can plan for baby shower games, food, favors, and themes and to what to put on baby shower invitations.
Wow, everything looks great! You guys did an amazing job! I can’t wait to try some of these for my SIL’s baby shower.
Thanks so much, Jae! Good luck with your SIL’s shower and have fun!!! 😉
This was simply gorgeous!!
Thanks so much, Elizabeth! Have fun planning your baby shower!
This looks so amazing! I am actually planning to give a friend of mine a surprise baby shower party, but me and the gals were discouraged to see how much it would cost us. But thank you so much for this and the tutorials! I would tell my gals about this and will tell them to forego with the plans. Thank you so much, Mandy. Cheers to you! 🙂
Hi Kyla! I am so happy to hear this! Thanks for reading and good luck with your surprise baby shower. It’ll be spectacular!
So lovely post. I like it. Thanks so much for the good post.
Thanks for reading, Sarah! Glad you found our tips and tutorials helpful. Have fun planning!
Lovely! I’m not that crafty though. I am trying to figure out if I can even afford to have a baby shower for my daughter. And then how am I going to make it look so pretty and frilly like you did! Absolutely gorgeous! Pssst-
Where did you put your furniture?
Hi Rhonda!
Oh what fun you are going to have planning your daughter’s baby shower! Congratulations to you! You can definitely plan a gorgeous baby shower for her on a budget. I’m glad you found this blog post. If you have any questions, feel free to email me. I’m happy to help! As for where did I put the furniture…we stored it away in the garage for the day. 😉
Have fun!
Where did you get the baby bottles at.
Hi Morgan, You can find the baby bottles at the dollar store. Have fun!
How much did it cost to do this whole thing? My mother is going to be doing the actual shower, but I wanted to give her some ideas since I know her whole budget would be absolute max $150.
Hi Lana,
Your mother can absolutely do this baby shower with $150 budget. That’s around what we spent. We made mostly all the decor pieces (tutorials are in the post), favors and we prepared the food ourselves.
Enjoy!