International Adoption Baby Shower

This post is long-overdue, but better late than never. My older sister just adopted a son from China. My mom, my other sister, and I threw her an adoption shower in December. I was in charge of decorations and activities.

Since the shower was around Christmas, we planned to incorporate red and green to our color scheme. I didn't want it to be overly Christmasy, so I made buntings with several bright colors to coordinate with the Christmas tree, but still made the party feel like a non-Christmas event.

We used pandas as our theme, because they're Chinese and just plain cute. I collected plush panda dolls wherever I found them (Ikea, Hobby Lobby, etc) and also made a couple to add to the batch. My two original creations were a fleece panda plush with an extra long neck and a panda face pillow cover. Both were gifted to my sister and nephew after the shower.

In my Pinterest research, I saw thumbprint guest books were a new thing. At first, I thought I'd make a large tree with a panda mommy and baby at the base, but then I saw the balloon idea. I searched for a panda version on Etsy to buy, but when I didn't find one, I just made my own!! 

I found a photo of a panda and mommy and drew them holding the balloon strings. Then we had each guest choose a color from our ink pad of assorted, bright colors, stamp their thumb or finger prints above the pandas like a balloon, and sign their names. Ours doesn't look perfect, but it looks pretty darn cute!! 

I drew another picture of a panda and mommy that didn't work so well holding a bunch of balloons, so I turned it into a decorative art piece by adding colored pencil and a sweet quote from Dumbo. 

I also found several sweet quotes that worked for a single mom adoption. After doing some research on Etsy, I decided (again) to just make my own word art. This quote made me teary. I ended up matting it in green for the shower, but this is just a screen shot of my word document:

We had several other panda accents including these adorable cupcake that my mom commissioned from Publix:

We had a great time celebrating my sister and new nephew, including a couple of low-key shower games, praying over them with baby shower verses, and of course showering her with gifts for her new life.