A Baby Shower Fit For a Jedi

If there’s one thing I love, it’s a great theme party!  So when my bestie was expecting her first child (a boy), I was thrilled to plan her baby shower along with two awesome friends of mine, Sandy and Jamye, who share my love for party planning. The baby shower was co-ed and since the expecting parents are huge sci-fi nerds, the theme we decided on was pretty much a no-brainer:  It had to be Star Wars! 

I don’t want to toot our own horns too much (Ha! Who am I kidding? I wrote a whole post about our efforts!), but I have to say we threw together a fabulous fête!  We kept the theme a surprise from the guests of honor and they were stoked when they stepped into the mini galaxy we created to celebrate their soon-to-arrive addition to the family.

First thing’s first, I had to figure out the invitations.  I decided to use Evite to send out electronic invitations because we didn’t want to blow the budget on paper invitations, and it’s a simple way to keep track of RSVP’s or send out updates and reminders to guests.  Another nice thing about Evite is that they have layouts where you can add your own image.   This was a god-send, because – unsurprisingly (and understandably) – there weren’t any Star Wars-themed baby shower options to be found.  So I got to work, creating an adorable and on-point design for the invites.

There’s a nifty little design app I love to use called Assembly.  You can make your own graphic images using their design tools and shapes, and the vision I had in mind for the invitation seemed super doable with my limited design skills.  I created a pastel image of a Death Star and added the words “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”.  Super cute, no?

As you may know, I’m a lover of puns, so part of the fun in the planning was coming up with excellent names for the food and drinks.  Is it weird to create a menu based on the punny descriptions you can come up with?  We didn’t think so either!  Let’s just say we were throwing out names like Dagobah-ba ganoush, 7 Leia Dip,  Boba Fetta Cubes, Pork Won Taun-Taun’s, Olive (It’s A) Trapenade” and Darth Taters. We may have reached just a *bit* with titles  like Imperial Eggs (because they were deviled eggs, and the Empire is as close as you can get to the devil, right), Cloud City Cukes and CapREYse Skewers.  And because my friend Sandy (who is British) makes a mean English Sausage Roll…we had to have Han Rollos.  Naturally.  

Unfortunately for my Instagram feed, the Han Rollos were such a hit that they disappeared before I had the chance to take a picture of them.  The meat rolls in the photo below – yummy as they were – do not hold a lightsaber to the Han Rollos.  Nothing does.  That said, Sandy was truly a wizard in the kitchen, concocting all these delicious bites seemingly effortlessly.  I would take on the empire for a morsel of her tasty dishes any day of the week. 

Our other planner-in-crime, Jamye, is a talented mixologist and whipped up tasty cocktails like the Sith-a-Poe Sling and Jedi Juice.  We offered some of the the drinks as non-alcoholic options, because we aren’t monsters and wanted the expecting mama to enjoy a tasty tonic without messing up her baby.  So Jamye mixed up a few of the drinks virgin-style, leaving out the booze, and guests could pour their own cups and then add liquor to the drink.  And, of course, it’s always important to stay hydrated, so we served up bottles of Luke Skywater.  Yup, I just don’t know when to stop with the puns.  Not really sorry about it either.

Appetizers, drinks…hmm, am I forgetting anything in the food department? Of course I am, cause y’all know we can’t have a party without sweets!!! Sandy aka Queen of Cuisine made several sugary treats like Chewbacca Chocolate Chip Wookie Cookies, Calrisian Caramels and Stormtrooper Shortbread cookies. We also picked up an assortment of mini cupcakes from the pros at Sprinkles, and popped cute lightsaber cake toppers on them.

With the menu squared away, next, there was the décor to consider.  Luckily, the ladies I teamed up with are giant Star Wars nerds, too, so together we came up with some classy and fun Star Wars-inspired decorations.  My friend Sandy graciously offered to host the festivities at her home and she already had this adorable Chewbacca picture on the wall.  Don’t you just love the bubble gum?

Additionally, she ordered some life-sized cardboard cutouts to grace the rooms.  We popped a Chewbacca one in the living room and everybody’s favorite droid duo occupied a nook in the dining room.  Doesn’t C3-PO look like he’s berating R2-D2 for eating all the Han Rollos?

As the craftiness force is strong with me, I knew I wanted to create an awesome twist on a baby shower classic:  The diaper cake.  Only, in this case, it was a diaper R2-D2.  I did some serious Pinterest research for inspiration, then hauled my booty to Michaels and got the bones for my creation.

All in all, I used 4 styrofoam discs, 1 styrofoam half-sphere, a wooden dowel (aka R2-D2’s spine – to hold my contraption together), silver spray paint, and some blue acrylic paint.  I also got some blue and silver ribbon to hold the diapers together.  Speaking of diapers, I bought a huge box of Size 1 Pampers Swaddlers (I checked with the mama-to-be for her diaper preference). We’re talking the 100+ boxes.  I figured this would get them through the first week of diapering, at least.  For R2-D2’s legs, I bought two blue bottle brushes, and for his feet, I used two dispenser boxes of Pampers Sensitive wipes.  Add on some blue plastic cutlery for R2-D2’s control panel and you’ve got all the fixins for a kick-ass Diaper Droid.  

Putting together my diaper R2-D2 was actually easier than I thought, which surprised me. The part that took the longest was painting the details of his head and getting the diapers into the perfect roll for each diaper tier.  Call me lazy, but I didn’t roll each individual diaper up with rubber bands, because I simply didn’t have it in me and I knew there was a quicker way.   I remembered a tip a friend once showed me for making a super easy circle of diapers:  I took about 35 diapers and arranged them like wheel spokes on top of one of the styrofoam discs and was sure to have them fold over each other – each diaper overlapping the next .  I then used the big silver ribbon to secure them into place.  One extra tip here:  After my first attempt of making the diaper tier, I cut out two longs strips of craft paper, stapled them together and fashioned them into a circle/hoop which I used to help hold and position the diapers until I could secure them with the ribbon.  It made the process a lot easier.    

Here are some pics of my crafting in progress. Note: Styrofoam doesn’t do so great when you just blast it with spray paint. I guess you’re supposed to coat it first so that it doesn’t break down? Oh well, so my R2-D2 might have looked a bit pock-marked.  But hey, you can’t overthrow an empire without getting a little beat up in the process, amiright?

  Overall, I’ll admit I was pretty darned self-satisfied with the final result and it made for an awesome centerpiece where guests could drop off gifts.  Behold the Diaper Droid in his natural habitat: 

I also thought it would be cute to make some baby-friendly wall art that matched our theme and could do double-duty as party decor. I created some pastel mini posters with quotes from the movie, using a Star Wars font to give it the perfect touch.  Once I printed the pics at my local CVS (oh, how I love the stores with those self-service kiosks that print them out on the spot!) I popped them into white picture frames and placed them throughout the space to add some Jedi flair. At the end of the party, the guests of honor got to take home some ready-to-hang nursery decor.

Other small touches included a little bunting sign using a light green, blue and silver motif to spell out “Welcome Baby K!”, some pastel tissue paper poufs and some black Star Wars balloons mixed with baby shower balloons. 

We put out some favors by the entry table – like Star Wars paper masks, Star Wars Rubik’s cubes, and some popcorn bags to take home.  Tragically, I experienced a major machine malfunction during my attempts to print out “Ready To Pop” stickers, which I wanted to put on the popcorn bags.  I had to toss the stickers, but hey, the popcorn tasted yummy nonetheless. Again, some of the decor on that table was stuff Sandy already had: Like the super cute Darth Vader M&M’s dispenser!   

As for baby shower games, the mama-to-be wanted to keep it pretty casual as she (mercifully) wasn’t into poop-inspired “Guess which candy bar you just had to eat out of a diaper?” shenanigans. I put together just one short and sweet game for which I curated about a dozen songs that all have the word “Baby” in the title.  I edited short clips of each song (which didn’t feature the chorus or title words in them) to play for the guests. Everybody guessed the song title based on its audio clue – they got a point for each correct guess and a bonus point if they correctly identified the artist singing the song.  The lucky partygoer with the most points scored a Starbucks gift card and bragging rights.  

I also stole an idea from a different baby shower: A diaper raffle.  It’s not a game but it’s got a prize element AND it helps out the parents-to-be in a big way.  On the invitation, I asked people who wanted to participate to bring a bag of diapers in size N or size 1 and they would get an entry into a raffle for a gift card.  I think it’s genius, because it gives the expecting parents a nice haul of much-needed diapers.  You truly can never have too many diapers, folks!  Seriously.   Newborns use like 10-12 diapers a day, it is unreal.  

And that about sums up our out-of-this world shower for our geek-tastic pal.  Both she and her husband had a great time and they were delighted by the fun theme and all the details.  I couldn’t have asked for any better partners to pull it all together.   Sandy and Jamye are bomb party planning cohorts and we joked that we should all go into the event planning business together, but only for nerdy parties…and only if our customers gave us full creative license and didn’t turn into divas on us…which probably would result in us getting zero customers, come to think of it.  Haha! It was such a blast to celebrate our friends’ happy occasion with those two fabulous ladies by my side and I daresay it was a raging success.