It all started when my friend Erica called me.
“I have an idea,” she said.
If it was any other human, I wouldn’t have been as interested to hear it. But when Erica Hawkins says she has an idea, it’s always a good one.
Erica comes from a family of dreamers who have an endless amount of headbands, vintage sweaters and 80’s swimwear that they wear in any thousand of different combinations. Family activities consist of frolicking at the beach or making music videos on old camcorders. It’s not uncommon to see a Hawkins cry from excitement, sadness, happiness and nostalgia all in the same sentence. And it’s even more uncommon to see one of them without a pair of roller skates.
I leaned in to the phone, “Tell meeeee.”
“While you are visiting Utah, let’s kidnap all our pregnant friends dressed as their children’s fairy godmothers. Do you have an extra set of fairy wings?”
And that’s when we decided to throw a baby shower the way they were always meant to be thrown.
See our guide below.
- For this activity you will need:
- Amelia Bedelia books
- A few sets of fairy wings and tutu’s
- A Subaru from the 80’s
- Two bundles of wood
- Blind folds
- Wool blankets
- A fire starter kit
- Magelby’s on Speed Dial
Step 1: Kidnap each baby mama at the crack of dawn. We chose a 6:30am start time.
Step 2: Sneak up on them in a variety of ways and strategically get them out of the house in any combination of pajamas and coats.
Suggested tactics include: calling them and saying, “I think your car is stolen, have you checked your driveway?” or even better surprising them while they are still in bed.
Step 3: Use blind folds to throw them off track, unless they are newly pregnant because you don’t want them to throw up in your car.
Step 4: Pick up Magelby’s pumpkin pancakes
Step 5: Park at the mouth of Provo canyon, build a fire and pass out contracts to make your fairy godmotherhood official. End the ceremony by taking turns reading Amelia Bedilia books and squealing over baby onesies.
You might be wondering, “How would my traditional set of suburban moms react to this type of shower?”
Our guests rated this fairy kidnapping a 10 out of 10. Flying colors.
Other FAQ’s we have include, “What about decorations?”
Great question. We used three different color sets of fall leaves to set the tone for the event as well as mismatched wool blankets to bring the look together.
“Will people think this is weird?”
Most traditional baby shower games are much weirder: For example, have you ever suffered silently as you tried to guess a series of fun size candy bars mashed up in diapers like poop? Yeah I thought so.
So there you have it, a guide to the perfect baby shower.
In all honesty, I loved everything about this day. You always trick yourself into thinking it would be weird to show up on an old friends doorstep that you haven’t talked to in forever. And that somehow the years or distance have changed the fact that you used to eat cereal for dinner together and egg each other’s ex boyfriends apartments. But it never does. That friendship is always still right there.
And that spur of the moment magic is still there too. The only thing keeping anyone from having that immature, laughable goodness is ourselves. Let’s bring it back to what’s real guys: prank calls, pancakes and some campfire girl talk with your sisterhood. Because it doesn’t get any better.
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