The Coolest Penguin Baby Shower

If you've fallen in love with the cute little penguins in “Happy Feet,” “Pingu,” or even “Madagascar,” join the club! The animated movies are a smash with adults and children alike, and it's a perfect theme for a winter baby shower.

To start off, you can cut out penguin shapes from white card and the wing shapes with black card. Glue them both together and top off your creation with an orange beak and googly eyes. Write out your invitation at the back of the card.

The obvious color scheme for this penguin baby shower is black and white, with touches of orange. Decorate the room in black, orange, and white balloons and streamers. You can find penguin plush toys quite easily so scatter them around the room. Some fiber batting or cotton can be used to simulate snow, sprinkled with a mixture of silver and iridescent glitter to make it sparkly. If you're going with the “Happy Feet” theme, add a surfboard in one corner and top some “ice floes” with silk tropical flowers.

Decorate each table all in white to make it feel frosty. Use shiny clear vases to hold white flowers and artificial silver leaves at the center of the tables. Sprinkle clear glass pebbles all around the centerpiece and add some white votive lights in clear or frosted glass holders to pick up some of that sparkle. Nice additions to the tables would be glass bowls filled with silvered sugar almonds, clear rock candy, or even sugar cubes and white marshmallows. Tie it all in with some penguin figurines popping in and out of the décor.

The buffet table's centerpiece can be a large penguin plushie that's sitting on an “ice floe” decorated with more white flowers. Little bouquets of white and orange flowers interspersed among the food would add splashes of color and keep the table from looking too dead. No glitter on the table, please! However, some “icicles” that you'd use on old-fashioned Christmas trees could add that cold, sparkly ice feel to this.

It would be nice if you could stick to the color scheme for the food as well! For example, black-eyed pea and carrot salad, sandwiches made with black and white bread, black pasta with a creamy white seafood or chicken sauce would be good ideas for the buffet. Let loose your creativity with this one!

Of course, there should be dessert. White and dark chocolate cakes or cupcakes decorated with little penguin cupcake toppers, the classic “Black and White” cookies, and a plain sheet cake topped with a penguin figurine and a smaller cake baked in a bowl and iced to resemble an igloo would be a delightful finishing touch. The cake can be further embellished with clear edible glitter or sanding sugar for that icy sparkle. If everyone likes coconut, it adds great texture to the cake. Just put it in patches, though, not splattered all over the whole cake.

For games, you could play “Which Penguin Broke Her Water?” by putting a water (or just plain inflated if your indoors in the wintertime) balloon between your knees and walking a short obstacle course with your hands fixed firmly to your sides. The one that can get through the course without breaking the balloon wins.

Prizes and favors for the penguin baby shower could be bags of black, white, and orange candy, little penguin figurines or miniature penguin plush toys.