The Party Thai

Kids need bathtub toys, and Sesame Street’s Ernie even sang a song about one of the classics, a tune called ‘Rubber Duckie You’re the One.’ It seemed like such a exquisite idea that I wasn’t sure if there would be enough duck baby shower around to plan a theme around, but I realized what I started looking into it that the idea was more popular than I had imagined. It was a lot simpler to put together such a baby shower than I anticipated it would be, especially with all of the outstanding input I gleaned from suring the Internet. You can get a ton of different duck favors online, not just for showers but for birthday parties for younger kids as well.
I was holding the shower in my rec room in the basement so I had plenty of room to set up indivdual tables to seat four guests at each. I got a yellow ducky cake with a couple of layers, the bottom one of which said baby girl in red frosting, and then I put that next to plates, drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and other deserts; on a table on the other side of the room, I put all of the baby shower presents. On the wall I had a huge cut out of Daisy Duck and smaller cutouts of Donald, Mickey and the whole Mickey Mouse Gang.
I got pink picture frames with tiny ducks on the edges to use a place card holders for each person’s spot at a table. The table settings had duck themed napkins, cup, paper plates, duck candles, and a duck-decorated punch bowl. I bought a bathtub for an infant that was in the form of a duck at a local retail place, and I put the punch bowl inside of it. When you looked at it, you just wanted to say, ‘aww, how sweet.’ I got some duck-shaped jello molds, and I put yellow water in them and froze them so that our ice cubes for the shower looked like little yellow ducklings. Believe me, it was the most ducks you’ve ever seen in one place at one time.
On the world wide web, I found a bunch of great ideas, and that’s pretty much where I found everything I needed, but I did get a few recommendations from some of the people at my school. I got a groovy baby shower duck favor that was a candle holder, and some duck shower favors that were rubber ducky bookmarks. The people at the shower thought they were to die for, and they got handed out to the winners of the games we did at the shower as well.
I filled a square tub with water and, prior to any guests arriving, I put a bunch of duck bath toys in it. On the bottom of the ducks I wrote numbers and as the guests arrived they each had to pick a duck out of the little pond. A couple of hours into the shower, I picked a number out of a jar, and the person with that numbered duck received an award. Another fun thing we did was when we tried to match each person to a photo of her that was taken when she was a baby. Everyone was asked to bring a baby picture of themselves and I put them all on a board, and hung it on the wall. Everyone looked over the photos and tried to figure out which picture belonged to which person who was present at the shower. The duck baby shower favor went to the one who guessed accurately on the most pictures.
Everyone enjoyed themselves, and the new mommy picked up quite a pile of wonderul presents for her baby girl. I’m so glad I found this idea for the baby shower online. I didn’t know how it would all come together, but it all worked out very well in the end. Going with the whole duck genre worked out swimmingly.

When you are planning a wedding and reception I think the hardest part is trying to find the perfect wedding favor for your guests. There is choices like practical gifts that they can use at home, crystal gifts or maybe even ceramic wedding favors figurines. Whatever your preference, I found out there are an awful lot of each to choose from.
Even for the country western themed ceremony and reception I’m planning, I have run across great possibilities for ceramic favors for our guests. Favors made of ceramic are perfect for any wedding you want to have. I found these little black ceramic wedding trays and tea caddys that I thought were really awesome. Some of the selection I checked out were tea lights, flower vases, and candle holders that would make awesome ceramic wedding gifts. Since I consider shopping for the wedding favors as the most difficult part of the planning, plus trying to decide from such a wide variety, I decided that it was the last thing I put on my list of things to do.
So, decorating my reception tables was the first task on hand. Picnic tables were the choice for my country western décor, and I put red and white checked tablecloths on each with daisies in little metal buckets to use as centerpieces. I bought adorable little barbecue grills as place card holders, which I let all the guests keep after the reception. No catering service for us, we were having a cookout for our reception and the little barbecue grill place card holders were perfect for the tables. To have the feel of the old west, we added little miniature cowboy hats for everyone’s place setting and set out cowboy boot shaped glasses for them to drink from. As ceramic wedding favors, I chose the pretty ceramic honey pots with heart shaped handles instead of the tea caddies for our friends and family. I felt they worked out better for a country western theme and I really liked the way they looked. But, I came close to choosing one of the candle holders as their ceramic wedding gift because they were just so exquisite. With all the great decorating accessories at my disposal, our tables had the look of a real country wedding, and the rest of the motif was perfect too.
We brought in haystacks and scattered them around the area, and hung up white lights that twinkled, all through the trees. A cowgirl with her rope tied to her grooms rope to have him hauled off to the preacher was the wedding cake topper we chose. Everyone seemed to get a lot of laughs out of our cake topper and we thought it was quite amusing too. There were lots of laughter at our reception, we all dance, and partied our little hearts out and had such a super time. We even managed to have a hayride arranged for everyone, and that really went over big time, especially with the kids.
We also had nice little surprises for our wedding party people, like our bridesmaids and groomsmen for instance. I bought for the ladies in my wedding party and my fiance chose the guys gifts, which were groovy little ceramic wedding gifts for the girls and really neat looking cowboy steins for the guys. We bought a flower girl tee shirt and a ring bearer tee shirt for the adorable kids in the wedding. Our friends and family and everyone in our wedding party seemed to be very impressed with our choice of wedding favor gifts for each of them.
I also bought a few extras for myself, like a sharp little western themed guestbook and pen, picture album and I even ordered a cowboy hat for me and my husband that said bride and groom on them. I was hoping a country western wedding and reception would be cool, but I never thought it could have been so fantastic and that everyone would have such a wonderful time.