If you're hosting a baby shower, you want it to be fun, and picking out party game prizes is probably one of the first things you want to plan out, after the invitations of course. The fun part is that the prizes can double as cheap baby shower favors too, so that's one of the baby shower favor ideas you can think about when you're planning out the games and prizes.
A couple of years ago I hosted my daughter-in-law's shower here was our "game plan" where the baby shower game prizes were a part of the "cheap" shower favors I had for the guests.
Baby Shower Invitations
I printed out my own invitations, which saved a lot of money because I just used postcards. Of course, postcard postage has gone up enough now (in 2011) to not be much of a savings anymore but... anyway...
On the invitations I asked each guest to bring a wrapped gift of any kind, less than .00, that would be auctioned off after all the games.
Instead of having to decide what kinds of prizes to give the game winners, I decided to have an auction as the final game. Now, the guests didn't know what they would be bidding on because the auction items were already wrapped, so that made it a lot more fun! More on that later...
Cheap Baby Shower Favors
The whole idea was to have the best shower possible while spending the least amount of money. So the "goody bags" for the guests were simple.
I shopped locally for everything and found some great deals on discontinued stuff like candy bar wrappers in blue with diaper pins on them. I just ran those through my printer to customize them.
I found the plastic bags at a discount liquidation store so they were only pennies a piece.
And I made custom laminated bookmarks and put one in each bag.
So each "cheap" baby shower favors bag contained:
* Candy bar with a personalized "It's a Boy" candy bar wrapper
* Baby shower bookmarks
* Some starter Monopoly money for the baby shower game prizes
* And the game cards for the games
Monopoly Money for the Baby Shower Game Prizes
I printed out "baby money" (Monopoly money and I changed the face to a baby LOL). With each game, the winner won a certain amount of monopoly money to be used for the auction.
You can find printable Monopoly money from Hasbro's website below. If you're good with a computer or you know someone who is, have them replace the center photo with a photo of a baby or some type of baby item. Your guests will get a kick out of it.
Baby Shower Games
You have to have some games for people to play and win the baby money so they have some baby money to use for the auction. These are pretty traditional, simple games but the one all the guests loved the best was the Baby Price Is Right game. You can get more information on that below too.
The Auction
After all the games were played, my husband became the auctioneer for the wrapped surprise gifts that the guests had brought. Yeah, the ladies loved him and even some of the men came up to watch this game in play. These women were hysterical trying to outbid each other for the gifts. It was funny!! Sisters were "borrowing" baby money from each other and their moms to outbid their cousins. You'd have thought they were at a real auction and the prizes were worth millions.
They had a blast! Afterwards, they all came up to me and said it was one of the best showers they'd ever been to, which made me feel really good because it was the first one I'd ever planned!
And all I really did was picked out a few games to play, printed out the game cards and money then packaged it all up into a fun shower!
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