Western theme baby shower (gender neutral)

If you follow me on facebook, you might have seen a sneak peak I posted on Sunday of a baby shower I was working on.  (And if you don’t follow me on facebook, why not?  Click over and follow me here!)

I am in charge of helping to decorate, coordinate and host showers at our church and I LOVE doing it!  This shower I thought was going to prove to be a little harder to decorate for but in the end, I LOVED how it came out!

The mother-to-be is keeping the gender a surprise so I needed to make it a gender-neutral shower.  I browsed for many ideas in stores and on Pinterest and could have done a Noah’s ark theme or all pastel colors or many other things.  But the couple is from out west and they love western things.  So someone suggested a Western/cowboy themed shower and it was perfect!

We did this shower at church in between services on Sunday so some décor options were limited.  But here is what I came up with with some help from others.

Here is the front of the room set up for the mother-to-be to open her presents.

You may remember the wagon wheel planter.  Yep, the same one I got back in the fall at a yard sale.  It was perfect for this!

Since the parents don’t know the gender we did a money-tree type idea on a clothesline filled with boy and girl clothes and lots of cash for clothes when the baby comes!

This picture is my favorite part of the decorations!  My goal for the shower was that I wanted it to reflect the theme of just a “Western themed baby shower” not boyish or girlish.  But just Western.

The basket was my Value Village find from last week, the napkins came from Dollar Tree and were tied with jute string knot.  I printed the “Wanted poster” on a last minute idea the night before.  And I found the idea for all the labels for the food online and just typed them out and printed them myself.

I always undecorate my house and drag it all with me to showers!  It saves a ton of money to use things I already have.  Shutters + weathervane were pervious yard sale finds.

I saw a picture just like this on Pinterest (from EllenJay’s blog) and recreated it as much as I could.  It was the perfect centerpiece for the long food table.

I actually borrowed most of the bandanas but you can find them at Dollar Tree (2/$1.00) or at Hobby Lobby or Michael’s for $1 each.

Windows, wreaths, lanterns and other décor from my home.  I used brown Kraft wrapping paper from the Dollar Tree on the table topped with a burlap runner.

Now let’s talk about the food – the most important part of the party, right??   It was my favorite – not necessarily because of the food we served but because of all the fun labels/names that I found to fit into the theme.

I found a lot of the food names on The Farrar Four, but you can also check out my baby shower board on Pinterest for lots more ideas that I pinned.

‘Lil Doggies” – Cocktail sausages in BBQ sauce.

“Cowboy Caviar” – Black bean + corn salsa (find the recipe here) served with chips.

“Happy Trails Mix” – chex mix mixed with m&m’s

“Frontier Fruit” – fresh fruit

“S’mores on a stick” – so easy and yummy!  Large marshmallows dipped in chocolate and then dipped in graham cracker crumbs.

The cake was so perfect!  We have a very gifted lady in our church that does amazing cakes and she did the cake for the shower.

And the “Water Hole” or punch served out of small mason jars.    The punch was a sparkling lemonade – so easy!  One 2-liter of Sprite or 7up mixed with 1 can of frozen raspberry lemonade concentrate (frozen and not diluted).  Yummy!

So there you have it!  This theme would be perfect for a birthday party too.  I found tons of ideas for cowboy/Western parties and a lot more Western themed baby showers than I would have thought.

Ever decorated for a gender-unknown baby shower?  What theme did you do?  Got any cowboy loving boys – throw a Western birthday party for them!