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Thursday, March 14, 2013

Snoopy Baby Shower



I meant to write this post ages ago, my baby shower was back in September. But better late than never!

As anyone reading my previous posts on my bridal shower and the various baby showers that I've assisted with, I love event planning. And I've always known that, if I were lucky enough to have a baby, I would want a Snoopy-themed baby shower.

This presents its own difficulties, as many Peanuts-themed items are becoming rare and expensive. And the ones that are available are more naturally geared towards children's parties, and I didn't really like the look of them. So instead, most of the items at my shower were handmade by myself or my family. Here is a quick rundown of what we did, in case anyone else out there would like to do something similar.


First, the invitation. I made this myself, and I think it came out rather well:

I'm not much of a photo editor, and clearly not a graphic designer. But I was actually able to use PowerPoint for everything I needed. First, decide on the size of your invitation. I decided on 5x7", which is size A7. I ordered my paper products from Paper Source. Once you know what size you want, you can go into PowerPoint and adjust the slide height and width to match (Design --> Page Setup). I would suggest adding an extra 1/4" to each side (5.25x7.25") as a bleed section.

 I found a Peanuts font online, to get the lettering right. Unfortunately, this font has no numbers, and the numbers from fonts I already had on my computer didn't look right, so I used the Waltograph font for the numbers, which paired nicely with the Peanuts font.

I got all of the images on the invitation by googling "baby snoopy" and I used PowerPoint to remove the original color and tint everything blue (Format --> Recolor --> Light Variations, while clicked on the image, I chose the light blue option for everything here). I also used PowerPoint to adjust the contrast and brightness (also under Recolor), which helped to sharpen the edges of the images. Lastly, I made sure the backgrounds for the two images flanking the text were transparent (Recolor --> Set transparent color).

I added a border for the bleed section, so that variations in printing wouldn't cut into my actual design.

Once I had the design the way I wanted it, I saved the slide as a jpeg: make sure everything in the slide is grouped, then right-click the slide and select "save as picture." PowerPoint caps the resolution of jpeg exports, so I followed these instructions to change the resolution of jpegs saved in PowerPoint to 300 dpi, it was easy to do and made a huge difference in the quality of the invitation!

For the favors, I decided to make a Greek cookie called Kourambiethes, which I also made for my bridal shower. I'm pretty proud of the packaging, they are little Snoopy houses:
This is a demo bag. Yes, I know Snoopy's house is actually all red, but I couldn't find red bags that were a close enough match to the tops, so I went with white. Red, white and baby blue ended up being my shower colors, and they looked great.
The bottoms are small white paper bags (I think in the vicinity of 2x3"). The tops are made from red construction paper (basically a trapezoid butterfly that folds over the tops of the bags). The Snoopy and Woodstock image was downloaded from Google images and sized to match the scale of the bags. They were printed on white cardstock, and cut out by my Dad, before being attached to the red tops. The tops were then folded over the filled bags, and voila! Snoopy favors!

My dad made tons of these, this isn't even half of the favors, he made well over 100!
My MIL made centerpieces for the tables. She makes these neat centerpiece/favor combination using these:

Clear tubes filled with color-coordinated M&M's, topped with white carnations and color-coordinated curling ribbon. These treats go into a bowl, the top flowers present a unified front, and it looks something like this:


Then a themed object can be placed on a stalk in the center of the bowl. My MIL and SIL painted bird houses to look like Snoopy houses, and put little plush Snoopies and Woodstocks on them:



Beautiful! I don't have a full length pic of the centerpieces, but there were also Snoopy balloons from Amazon that looked like this:
Here is what the table looked like all set up:

I also made an Activity Booklet with puzzles and such. It is in pdf format, but anyone is welcome to take pages out of it as they wish:

You'll obviously want a different first page, but the rest of the pages can be used for anyone. It can be tinted purple for a girl.
I hope anyone out there looking to plan a Snoopy shower got some ideas! There are tons of other great ideas out there, I wish I could have done more!

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi. Your Snoopy Baby Shower decorations are beautiful. I would love to purchase some of your father's Snoopy houses if there are any left. I know he made a lot of them:) Please let me know if this is possible and how much. Thank you. kathleenmcguirk@yahoo.com

Anonymous said...

Where did you find bags that small?

Meredith P said...

Hi Anon,

I found the bags at Michael's craft store, they are 2.5x3" at the base.

Kathleen, I sent you an email, I hope you got it. We actually don't have any left, the houses were the favors, so the guests took them home. I have a top for my scrapbook, and that is about it. But my dad might still have the file (which is Snoopy scaled for the sized bag I used) if you are interested.

ElizabethS said...

I would also be interested in the template. How did you attach the roof to the bag? Please let know E

ElizabethS said...

I would also be interested in the template. How did you attach the roof to the doghouse? Please let know. e

Meredith P said...

Hi Elizabeth,

I have to double check with my dad, but I believe the Snoopy was attached to the roof with a tiny amount of glue, and then the roof was attached to the bags with double-stick tape on either side of the roof.

Anonymous said...

I would love the file if he still has it. kunathm@yahoo.com

Maricela Leal said...

I just love all of your ideas! Is there any way you could email me the template of the document you used for your invitation?

Unknown said...

I am a Snoopy lover too!. I would love the template for the doghouse. I would also any other Snoopy/Peanuts items.
THANKS!

Paulette said...

Hi! We are doing a Snoopy-themed baby shower for my daughter, and we love the favor/centerpiece! What did you use for the plastic tubes, and where did you find them? I'm having a difficult time finding something that will work! Thank you so much!!

Meredith P said...

Hi Paulette! My mother-in-law made those favor tubes, I will ask her where she got them! Thanks for stopping by!

Drew Watts said...

Hey, I really love these “Snoopy Baby Shower photos”. Those DIY favors are just stunning. At local outdoor party venue New York I also want to host my cousin’s birthday party so all these decoration and favor ideas would be perfect for her party.

emily said...

Thank you for this nice sharing. Great post.

Anonymous said...

Hi, I wud also like to ask for the template
of Snoopy with Woodstock. TKS.