tralynn, Hi, and Welcome. I am guessing the expected one is a boy :) As far as the chocolate lollypops and a way to display them. Have her go to the dollar store or a few other stores looking to see if she can find some coffee mugs that are sports related (this way they get a take home gift). Take the sports mug and put styrofoam in it, then poke in the end part of the stick of the chocolate lollypops into the styrofoam. Cover the stryofoam with the shredded plastic or paper in your color theme that you can find at Walmart and most dollar stores. Then as a place card, you can attach a name tag with your guests name on it (either make the tag with the special cutters they have out in the scrapbook stores or cut it out with the scalloped scissors they sell at the craft store, then use a one hole punch to put a hole at the top of the tag, attach the tag to the mug with ribbon and you are set. As for the rest of the table, you can set up a centerpiece with a layout of sports equipment (football, baseball etc) Another popular thing these days is to do cupcakes as the main dessert. You can find inexpensive cupcake stands at Walmart, Michaels Arts and Crafts etc. The cupcake stand makes a nice center piece too. HTHs

"I always thought you were not supposed to put where a person is registered on an invitation. And especially not ask for gifts. But oh well." The entire point of a baby or wedding shower is to "shower" the guest of honor with presents, so putting the registry information in with the invitation is typically considered appropriate. It's events that are NOT specifically oriented toward the gifts, such as the wedding itself or a graduation party, where open reference to gifts is inappropriate. Did anyone else think a shower invitation from the cousin's daughter-in-law, whom the OP has met maybe three times, is casting the "gimme" net just a tad far out? Maybe if OP and cousin were very close friends, sure, but good grief! My standard shower gift is onesies. Lots and lots of plain white onesies, because my baby brother (now changing his own kids' diapers, how time flies!) could easily go through a dozen in a day. Budget is pretty much always around $25 unless it's a really close friend, because that's what MY budget can afford. If you shop right you can get a lot of onesies for $25! (I think my record is 10 6-packs that had been put on clearance for $2.50 a bag, down from $10, because the packages were ripped up. So I took them out of the packages, folded them nicely into a pretty box, and went merrily off to the shower - where I got in a viciously polite whispered argument with the host because I refused to play the "baby food tasting" game *retch*). Kiddo often outgrows them well before they wear out anyway. No one I know has done the "clothesline" although I do think it would be pretty cool to do a clothesline specifically to donate to the local women's shelter, and put that right on the invitation; I do find it very ironic that my lower-middle-class family ("you might be a redneck if...") thinks wishing wells are tacky. Diapers can be tricky, unless a specific type is noted on the registry, because of that whole cloth-vs-disposable thing. There are some verrrrry strong feelings on that subject! I do appreciate registries, both for weddings and baby showers, if I'm not very close to the recipient because it tells me what the recipients are interested in - I don't necessarily need to purchase something off the list, but if I see 20 Winnie the Pooh items on a baby shower list, that tells me that Mum is diggin' Pooh and might appreciate some mint-condition vintage Pooh books to read to her child or decorate a shelf in the nursery. It also does indicate to me what's NOT really welcome. For instance, if I see on the registry that everything the parents chose is either khaki, sage, and/or cream (such as at the last shower I attended), it's a pretty good bet that the parents are unlikely to be overly enthusiastic over primary colors or the old pink/blue routine.

Last 3 baby showers I went to played: Let each person pull a length of toilet paper off a roll, the one that's piece fits around mom-to-be the closest wins.2nd game, fill a bowl with uncooked plain white rice. Mix in several packages of loose safety pins. Hold the bowl over each persons head, they reach up and grab a handfull of rice and pins. The person who grabs the most safety pins wins. You need a 2nd person to be standing there with a bowl or styrofoam plate that the player can dump their handfull of rice and pins in and it can be counted before dumping back in the rice & pin bowl. It is a lot of fun when you can get male guests to play too. 3rd. game have a list of items used for baby, scramble words and see who is first to unscramble correctly all words. You can see I have been to baby showers with the past 6 months. Oh, nice suggestion, ask everybody to give a book instead of a card with gift. I found a baby cloth book at one of the craft shows I did for last baby. Mom-to-be really liked it.

Raven- thanks for reminding me!! One thing I ALWAYS include in my mommy gift is a tube of Lansinoh. With my first I was crying from the pain of cracked and bleeding nipples until someone gave me some Lansinoh. It wasn't even 24 hours later and I was no longer in pain. A little goes a LONG way, I think I went through one tube for 2 children. It seems pricey at about 10 bucks a tube but it lasts forever and can be used for many things outside of breastfeeding. When my kids got diaper rash I used it and the rash cleared up within a day or two. Hubby had a bad case of heat rash and I told him to try it, he was cleared up in a few days. Basically any skin irritation we have had has been treated using Lansinoh. With my last the hospital gave me several samples of medela lanolin. I tried it for about a week but it just wasn't doing anything. Finally begged my hubby to go get me Lansinoh and the relief was almost immediate.