Beatrix Potter Peter Rabbit Themed Baby Shower

Seriously, who are those women? You know, the ones who have a baby shower that looks perfect beyond words and everything matches like nothing you've seen. Who ever knew there was so much pastel in the world? I am in awe of these people! Despite the fact I know I'll never hold one of those adorable parties we all see pasted all over Pinterest (and realistically, they're probably put together by party planners who charge hundreds for the display) I can but use these gorgeous photos as inspiration. And I did so in creating this Peter Rabbit themed Baby Shower for my friend Danielle.

One of the easiest themes I could have come across for my friend's baby shower was Beatrix Potter's character Peter Rabbit. It's such a cute baby shower theme, and quite neutral or genderless too. My friend didn't know the sex of the baby so this was a good one to go with. It was very economical to set up too, using Mr McGregor's veggie patch as the main table layout theme. I made sure I went grocery shopping up at the fresh veggie market the day before, so all my usual veggies were used in the display--cabbages, carrots, pumpkins bunches of herbs and yellow squashes. I arranged a plate of strawberries piled on a cake stand, and spread the table with other delicious edibles such as choc oreo mint truffles decorated as cabbages (white chocolate coloured green), fondant bunny and veggie topped cupcakes, individual dips in a cup with matchsticks of carrot, celery and cucumber, and a magnificent bassinet and baby carved out watermelon and surrounded by fruit salad...

The Peter Rabbit cake was of course, according to theme, a delightfully moist carrot cake. Peter Rabbit himself was made of fondant, or white icing as some call it. You can also model him from gum paste or the likes. I firstly looked for a tutorial on how to make a Peter Rabbit figuring and I couldn't find anything to my surprise. So I basically worked with two pear shapes of fondant-a large one for the body, and a smaller one for the head which I turned on a horizontal angle and sat upon the larger pear shape. I cut out from blue fondant a rectangle and draped it over the rabbit's back and added smaller rectangles onto the sides to act as sleeves to the jacket. I couldn't get a nice dark tone for his fur by adding brown food dye to the fondant, so I opted to paint him with the brown after he had dried, and it worked very well, giving him a nice multi-tonal look to the fur.
The vegetables that he sat amongst were likewise created from fondant. For the cabbage leaves that surrounded the cake and encased the fondant baby, I selected a nice veined leaf from the garden (geranium) and gave it a wipe over and left it to dry. Then as I rolled the green fondant, I lay this leaf over the fondant to give it this delicate imprint.

 

Mummy to be Danielle surprised us all with this show stopping carved watermelon baby in a bassinet. The head is made from cantaloupe, the nose a green grape and the eyes are black grapes. It was surrounded by kiwi fruit, yellow watermelon, red watermelon, cantaloupe, grapes and honeydew melon. Yum!

On this cake stand we have carrot cake cupcakes turned into McGreggor's veggie patch! The veggies are made from fondant, and the soil made from crushed oreos. The icing is cream cheese frosting with a bit of green food colouring.