Narnia Baby Shower

Narnia Baby Shower

When one of my best friends invited me to her daughter's Narnia themed baby shower, I was intrigued.  Then they asked me to help plan it, knowing that I have lots of props.

I twisted it to include more of the Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe forest theme, as I have many over-sized realistic animals, such as the bear in the photo above.  I already had the

pattern for enlarging the light post in my files, so adding a bow and a welcome sign was easy enough.  

She is a REALLY good friend, so I splurged on the lion from Amazon.  All of the creatures on the mantle are mine. I found some clip art of shield shapes, enlarged them in Photoshop, added letters.  A hole punch and some string made this banner easy to do. She added some Christmas greenery (even though the Ice Queen banished Christmas in Narnia.)  Her elf stays there year round, but the I made the flowers in my community college floral class.

The Polar Bear was from my Polar Bear Party at the beach.

I made the white arrangement for the food centerpiece to represent the 100 years of winter.  This area was winter, while the family room with the lion was spring. She and her other daughter, our hostesses, had fun serving only ROUND food.  Since Narnia takes place fictionally in medieval times, they thought using their ROUND table was perfect.  They had meatballs, spinach balls, crab balls, melon balls, olives, tomatoes and mozzerella balls.  I loved it. 

When the guests first came in the front door, they were greeted by mama skunk and her babies.  As a skunk is in the books, she was appropriate.  The babies are on boards with the soft side of industrial hook-and-loop tape covering their surface.  This lets them slide.  We played skunk shuffleboard using mop poles, without the head.  This was new to the ladies who haven't been to any of my parties that include games.

Beavers and Badgers are also characters in the series.  So when I found these tossing sticks, I had to set up this game.  When I am looking for tossing items, I always start on Amazon in their dog tossing toys section.  You will be surprised what you find there.

The wardrobe plays such an important role, so I cut brown paper to the size of my friends electronics cabinet and used a black Sharpie to outline following a clip art picture of one. 

When I saw this metal pole stand at the garden center, I just knew I would use it many times.  So I enlarged a sign I made and glued and taped the pieces together.  I added ribbons.  

                      

I wrote a poem to tie the theme into the baby shower, borrowed bits and pieces of Narnia illustrations and gave this to her as another gift. I have a LARGE mouse puppet.  I made the sword he carried with a small sign-post from Michaels.  I took its little blackboard off, glued a wooden letter T to it, and painted it with silver paint.  The shield was cut from glitter fun foam.

Above are the shields if you'd like to use them.  

Our third game was a Narnia Animals Match.  I put two moles on the list by mistake.  The mice are used twice.

One last image.  I am always recycling my props to new themes.  I bought these glittery twiggy rings years ago for a ski themed event.  My friend put them under the sauce bowls and amidst the snow.  Those brown tablecloths have been to many events.  Using brown for a forest theme and building up with snow or green makes a nice statement.  The mom-to-be cried when she saw everything, so it was worth all of our combined efforts.