Bears & Blooms: Baby Shower Recap

Stephanie Padgett
Mar 20, 2022
4 min read

Over the last few months, I dreamed of what my baby shower would look and feel like. March 12th, 2022 was truly one of the most special days of my life! I and Baby P felt surrounded by love and joy by so many of our favorite women.

A year ago, one of my besties had a baby shower that asked all of the guests to bring a baby book with a note inside of it to read to your baby. It was truly one of the sweetest ideas I had ever heard, and I knew that one day I wanted to have that same request!

I'm so glad I did it, because as I put all of the books on his bookshelf, I read through all of the kind words of encouragement and love and cried! It was so memorable to have those words from people who love him in his first books.

Huge thank you to some of the individuals seen below for being such a major part of this special day: my Mom and SIL, Tori, for organizing and helping me plan; Amy; my Aunt Kristy; and of course, Luisa Douglas, for helping take some beautiful photos for us to capture forever!

The Food:

The theme was "pregnancy cravings," and it was honestly a hodgepodge of some of the most random foods because well...nothing you eat in pregnancy makes any sense at all! My first trimester, I could only eat carbs, Diet Coke, and Chick-Fil-A market salads. Second trimester was a smidge bit better, but still contained mostly carbs and coffee haha.

The menu for the day included:

Bagel Bites
Coffee bar
Mom-osa bar (champagne with 3 different juices)
mini donuts
Velvet Taco
Salad
Charcuterie board with meats and cheeses
Chick-fil-a nuggets
Custom cookies by Baked by Laynie (seriously incredible- see below for how STUNNING these cookies were, and they were just as delicious as they were beautiful!)
Custom cake by Donna de Guzman (also as delicious as it was adorable!!) Donna took photos of our two fur-babies and made play-doh versions of them for the cake and I honestly almost cried over how dang cute they were. I saved them to put in his nursery!

Photos by: Luisa and Douglas Photography

The Decor:

My mom was an angel this past weekend and did all of the decorating! Almost everything we purchased was from Hobby Lobby or Etsy. I'll add a few of the links below for some of the items I found online :)

My mom handmade all of the planter boxes that were placed on the tables. She did a mix of faux flowers with real flowers we found from Trader Joes and they were so perfect. You couldn't even tell what was real and what was faux!

The balloon arch was also a dream come true- I worked with Nest Event Rentals and they were an 11/10. I went into their office a few months back to pick colors for the balloon arch, and I really wanted a true dusty blue color but they didn't have any that matched just right. They went above and beyond to FIND balloon colors that would make the perfect dusty blue. I was absolutely blown away by their customer service and the perfection of this arch!

Amazon blue balloons for the "BABY" box decor
White balloons for "BABY" box decor
"BABY" box
Planter boxes (similar linked here)
Candles from ETSY
It's a Boy sign (check Hobby Lobby!)
Door wreath
OH BABY guestbook
All tableware is from HomeGoods
All plates/napkins/Winnie the Pooh table decor is from Hobby Lobby

The Games:

When I went to one of my besties baby showers last year, one of the MOST FUN games we played was a "guess the baby food" game. If you didn't know- I love...and I mean LOVE...the baby food packets that are like apple sauce from the grocery store. So this game was right up my alley! Hahahaha.

The baby food guessing game was seriously so much fun, and one of the guests actually guessed 10/11 correct ingredients which was mind-boggling since some of the flavors were on the bizarre side.

Another game we did was the "Mommy or Daddy" game where the guests had to identify whether Hayden and I were the right answer. Some of the questions included: "Who was the bigger baby at birth?" "Who will sing lullabies?" "Who will be the stricter parents?" and it was hilarious to see what people guessed!

The last game was having the guests guess how many gummy bears were in the baby bottle.

We ran out of time for the last two games, but we were planning on playing "Guess the Baby" (which is where we had all of the guests baby photos displayed and people had to identify which baby was who!) and a diaper changing relay race.

For prizes, I went ham at Target and put together prize goody bags of all of my favorite beauty products and candles!

The Attire:

I treated myself to hair and makeup done by one of my all-time favorite humans, Austin Ryde. He happened to be in Dallas doing pageant photography the same weekend as my baby shower! He did my wedding hair and makeup and also did my h/mu for years when I competed in pageants. There is no one else I would trust!!!

I felt so incredibly beautiful thanks to him- I told him I wanted glowy hot mama and boy, did he deliver!

I ended up wearing two dresses for my baby shower (they were both SO cute, I couldn't pick just one!). The blue toile dress is by Nothing Fits But and I am wearing an XS Petite (they didn't have XS regular but it fit just fine!). Nothing Fits But is a Korean brand, but fits on the larger side.