Creative ways to welcome new baby

Photos show designers and stylists Maureen Anders and Adria Ruff’s use of a palette of mint, aqua, yellow and lime green for a gender neutral baby shower, as well as twins baby shower decorated and styled by Sunny by Design using Dr Seuss’ Thing One and Thing Two characters (top). PHOTOS: AP

|     Kim cook     |

IF you’re throwing a baby shower for a relative or friend, creating a suitably festive atmosphere is part of the fun.

Some people go all out by hiring an event planner, while others go more simply, taking the do-it-yourself route.

Whether you’re nurturing an elaborate party plan or just want a little inspiration to get started, the Internet opens the nursery door to a wide range of ideas from baby shower experts. Here are a few with their favourites:

Maureen Anders and Adria Ruff, who run the Anders/Ruff event planning company in Charlotte, North Carolina, recently went with a colour scheme of aqua, mint, lemon and lime for a gender-neutral shower. Mint and orange, grey and yellow, and aqua and coral are also on trend, Anders says, and even black and yellow – for a “baby to bee” theme.

“’Gender reveal’ showers are really popular,” she says. The guests don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl till the mum-to-be cuts the cake and reveals a pink or blue interior.

Book showers are another hot trend: Guests bring a children’s book to help build the new baby’s library. Party planners A Good Affair, in Newport Beach, California, created a “Peter Rabbit” and “Pat the Bunny” theme at one recent baby shower, in Anaheim, California, with vintage rabbit books as décor.

On the pregnancy website The Bump, Allison Micarelli-Sokoloff suggests a “Goodnight, Moon” theme, with dark blue and white polka dots and hanging silver foil stars. Blue lemonade with star shaped fruit, a round cake with dark blue icing and white dots, and starry sugar cookies as favours round out the party elements. For an activity, she suggests gathering each of the poem’s items: mittens, a toy house, etc and having each guest list them in the order they appear in the story.

For their gender-neutral party, Anders/Ruff used colourful yet inexpensive yarn to make decorative pompoms, gift ties, even flowers. They dipped marshmallows in coloured chocolate and candy pearls to make table displays, and served tinted macarons and paper-cone popcorn.

Designer and party planner Sunny Duran got inventive for a twins baby shower in Ramstein, Germany: Inspired by Dr Seuss’ “The Cat in the Hat”, she decorated with book images and typography, and served green egg salad and goldfish in a bowl.

“I wanted everything to have a very playful feel. My favourite part of the book is when Thing One and Thing Two run through the hall with kites,” she says, so she ran kite banners around the space and used the motif on labels. The Cat’s red-and-white top hat became the party cake. (AP)