Everyone knows that Mom’s life is changing. She is literally changing in front of everyone’s eyes. But often, people forget that Dad’s life is changing too. Whether you throw a Dad shower for men alone, or include women for a couple’s shower, it can be fun to have a baby shower with a masculine bent. Fall is the perfect time to celebrate Dad’s changes. Not only does the change of season exemplify the changes in his life, but there are so many fun things that happen only in the fall. Check out these ideas and see if any of them would appeal to the men in your life.

Touchdown!

Celebrate a successful fatherhood milestone with a football themed shower. There are so many places and ways that you can incorporate a baby shower into a football theme. Why not have the shower as a tailgating event with your favorite football fan. Just make sure that you have a place to safely store the gifts while everyone enjoys the game.

Invitations

There are a wide range of ways to incorporate football into your invitations. You can celebrate the emergence of a little linebacker ready to join the family team. You can also celebrate a new MVP or quarterback. If the couple has been trying to have a child for a long time, you can always celebrate that they finally made a touchdown! Be sure to invite your guests to wear their favorite jerseys or football T’s.

Be sure to include the time and place for the shower as well as any gift registry information. While you are choosing and printing the invitations, go ahead and have thank you notes printed that match the invitations. Then, while you address the invitations, you can address the thank you notes. During the shower, you can write down what each guest gave on sticky notes and put them with the appropriate thank you note. This makes it easy to take care of gratitude after the shower.

Decorations

Deck your party space with your favorite team, or teams. Afterall, couples don’t always see eye to eye when it comes to their favorite players. Use banners, posters and even foam fingers to show your team spirit. For a shower like this, you don’t need expensive lace tablecloths, napkins and silver tableware. There are plenty of places that sell football themed tablecloths and dining ware.

Food

A football theme can be a lot of fun to serve. Just think about your favorite stadium fare: hot dogs, nachos and, of course, beer. But don’t limit yourself. You can also dip big strawberries in dark chocolate and pipe white icing on for the stitching on these fruity footballs. You can also use round cookie cutters to cut brownies into football shapes and add stitching to their tops.

Games

Catch the “baby”: Place a baby onsie on a football. Ask your guests to pass the baby from one to another. Obviously, the person that fumbles is a bad parent! Delivery Madlibs: Download a written transcript of your favorite touchdown. Substitute the names of the parents and grandparents for the names of the players. Add the obstetrician if you know it. At the party, tell the group that you have reached into the future and gotten a transcript of the delivery of the baby. Read the play with the names, and, of course, instead of touchdown, you shout “The baby’s born!”

Bye Bye Bunting

For a lot of people, noting says Fall like the opening of hunting season. While some may find it distasteful, hunting plays a vital role in the lives of people and animals alike. In many places, human hunters have taken the place of wild predators to keep natural animal populations healthy and strong. In addition, wild meat if organic, free of pesticides, antibiotics and hormones and fresh. There are still families all over the world that count on hunted food for part of their diet. Plus, it can be a wonderful way for families to bond in nature.

If you have a hunter in your family, you may want to throw a hunting themed shower.

Invitations

There are several fun ways to incorporate hunting into your invitations. You can design your invitations around the traditional poem “Bye Bye Bunting, Daddy’s gone a-hunting. Hunting for a rabbit skin, to wrap a baby bunting in.” You can play on the homophone “deer.” You can say something like “Oh Deer, Bob’s about to become a father!” When you design your invitations, print the thank you notes as well.

Decorations

Obviously, camouflage will play heavily into your decoration. But you can also incorporate nature into your decorations. Consider bringing branches and real or artificial leaves into the house and placing them in vases or using them as swags around the party area. You can also use camouflage fabric for the tablecloth and napkins. You can go another way. There is always the traditional Bugs Bunny routine with Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck. “Wabbit Season/Duck Season” can offer a technicolor party palette with a fun flair.

Food

There are several ways to go. If you have a wild game butcher in your area, consider serving venison or ram steaks. Not only are they tasty, but they are very healthy. If that isn’t an option, you can go with a camping fare such as chili, franks and beans, or even purchase the favorite camp food of the father-to-be and serve that to the guests. You can also

Games

Baby hunter

You can set your guests to work hunting during the shower. Before the shower, hide a number of baby socks around the party area. To determine how many socks to hide, triple the number of your guests. So, if you have twelve guests, hide thirty-six socks. Let your guests know that the socks are all around. As the party progresses, encourage the guests to hunt for the socks. Whoever finds the most by the end of the shower wins a prize.

Baby Scat

The ability to recognize animal scat is vital to any hunter, and to any parent. Before the party, number up to six disposable diapers. Open six different candy bars. Place one bar in each diaper and write the number of the diaper on the candy wrapper. Just before the party, zap all six diapers in the microwave so that the chocolate is melty. Hand out sheets of paper and ask each guest to inspect the contents of each diaper to determine the candy bar in each diaper.

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