Baby Shower Bagel Bar

My wonderful co-worker and fellow dietitian, Marissa, is expecting a sweet baby girl in June! As soon as she shared the news, the plan was to throw her a surprise shower. The thing about surprises, as you may know, is that they are hard to keep and coordinate. Surprises planned by eight Type A personality registered dietitians (RDs) proved to be impossible, but fun was had by all nonetheless.

The shower was inspired by things that Marissa adores — brunch, bagels, and comparing the size of her growing babe to various foods. Being from New York and of the Jewish faith, I just knew that Marissa would l.o.v.e. having a bagel bar. Since Jewish tradition often dictates that a shower should not be held before the the birth of the baby, we could really just rename this post Marissa’s Baby Bagel Shower!

I kept the decor simple using glass baby food jars as mini vases. I also created a large floral centerpiece using carrots. This was my favorite detail and something I will do again for other occasions.

Various bagel toppings and sweets were offered along with coffee, tea, mimosas, and raspberry lemonade. If hosting your own bagel bar, don’t forget the toaster!

The garland is from the Spritz line at Target (comes in all different colors and patterns), and I just added my own writing, b is for bagel — inspired by this adorable onesie on Etsy.

Since this was a gathering of RDs, we came up with games that would be food focused. A baby food tasting game was right up our alley. And because we spend much of our work day talking to our clients about their bowel movements, we figured we would be experts at the “guess the candy bar melted in a diaper” game. Instead of candy, we decided to test our knowledge of protein bars. This was lovingly titled the Protein Poo Game. 🙂

My special project was creating the favors. I baked my favorite sugar cookie recipe in fun fruit and veggie shapes. I decorated them with buttercream icing instead of royal icing because, in my opinion, buttercream tastes WAY better. The finished cookies were wrapped in cellophane bags and sealed with a custom label. I created a small watercolor painting/pen drawing of various fruits and veggies, scanned the painting into my computer, added text in Adobe Illustrator, and printed on Avery shipping labels. For tips on decorating cookies with buttercream icing, I recommend visiting Jenny Cookies website and Youtube channel.

For Marissa’s gift, we stuck with our food theme and went in together on the Babymoov Food Processor NutriBaby Zen. I’ve heard from many mamas that a special food making system isn’t necessary as baby food can be easily made using your regular blender or food processor, but what sold us on this system is that it has 5 functions: warms baby bottles and jars, sterilizes, steams, defrosts, and blends. Tell me a Vitamix can do all that! I think not. Any moms out there have experience with this food making system or advice for Marissa? Please share in the comments.

SOURCES & INSPIRATION

• Painted Baby Food Jars Tutorial – I used acrylic paint instead of latex
• Floral Carrot Centerpiece
• Garland
• Plates – I think these were supposed to be donut plates, but the image looked just like a bagel!
• Paper Straws & Napkins – I couldn’t find links for these, but they were found at Target
• Washi Tape Flags – I’ll try to post a little tutorial soon