Crawfish Boil Gender Reveal

Cody and I have wanted to host a crawfish boil in our backyard since the day we moved in (two years ago) so when we were brainstorming gender reveal ideas, the crawfish boil idea resurfaced and we decided to go for it. Now I wasn’t quite sure how to tie in “crawfish” and “gender reveal” but I knew I’d think of something.

Tying “Crawfish” and “Gender Reveal” Together:

We tossed around ideas of putting a colored smoke bomb under the pot and use the saying “what’s cooking?” And also the idea of opening a big pot of colored balloons. But the more I thought about it, the reveal itself didn’t have to do with crawfish so I decided to do a more traditional confetti canon reveal. I liked that idea because well… confetti is fun… but also it gets our family involved where the other ideas they would just be spectators. I came up with the saying “we’re boiling over with excitement to know what baby will be” and decided to use that as my way of tying the gender reveal and crawfish (boil) together.

Invitation:

I basically make everything on Canva so I put together a cute invite on Canva and saved it as a photo and distributed it via text to our friends. I love getting mail but it adds cost and time and as I learned with our wedding, mail gets lost, so we stuck with the informal text invites. The best thing about text invites, is you get almost an immediate RSVP too! I removed our address and number but the invite I created is below.

The Crawfish:

We got our crawfish from Spanky’s in Richmond, TX, and was one of the best deals we’ve seen. It was $3.45/pound so we bought 3 sacks to feed everyone. It was a medium/large field mix and some of them were huge! We had maybe 5 pounds leftover so it was the perfect amount for our 30 person crowd. So I’ve been sworn to secrecy from Cody’s brother to not share the crawfish boil recipe he shared with us, but man was it good. Top 3 crawfish I’ve ever had for sure. My uncle Tom was nice enough to bring his huge crawfish cookers AND a large pot so we could crank out the crawfish quickly. And Cody’s brother, Mike, was nice enough to cook it all with his famous recipe. I am so beyond grateful for the friends and family we have who are always willing to pitch in and help. It makes me smile how much baby is already so loved.

The Hor’devours:

As I said, I’m so grateful our family is always willing to lend a hand. My mom made two full trays of desserts, Cody’s mom brought a huge casserole-sized 7-layer dip, and my best friend, Valerie, made her famous empanadas. With so much contribution, I only made two desserts and two appetizers. For the desserts, I made a double-layer round cake with one layer pink and one layer blue. I also made about 50 mini cupcakes. I don’t know what it is about mini cupcakes but people gravitate towards mini cupcakes so much more than full-sized cupcakes. My two easy crockpot “dump” appetizers are below:

• 3 Ingredient Meatballs: One 32 ounce bag of frozen homestyle meatballs, one 16 ounce jar of grape jelly, one 12 ounce bottle of Heinz chili sauce. Dump all of it in the crockpot and cook on low for 4 hours.
• Easy Buffalo Chicken Dip: 3/4 cup Frank’s red hot wing sauce, 1 cup ranch, 2 blocks cream cheese, 1.5 cups cheddar cheese, 2 10 ounce cans chunk chicken. Dump all it in the crockpot and cook on low for 2-3 hours.

In addition to the appetizers and desserts, I also made two large dispensers of lemonade- one pink raspberry and one blue raspberry to go with the pink and blue theme. Tip- cut up some lemons and float them in the lemonade. Instantly more aesthetically pleasing.

The Decorations:

Decorating is my favorite part about any party (I know shocker right?!) I wanted to do a photo wall with a balloon arch. Something about balloons (similar to confetti) is so fun. I had never done a balloon arch in my life but decided to attempt one. I ordered this kit off Amazon and liked it a lot. The night before, Cody helped me air up the balloons with his air compressor and I literally bruised my fingers tying so many balloons. In the morning, I started by adding the simple pink and blue balloons to the plastic “arch” strip the kit came with and it was actually a pretty quick and easy process. Now that I’ve made one, there are definitely things I would do differently here like vary the sizes of the balloons, and attach the “topper” balloons once the arch is already up. But you live and learn and for my first attempt, I was pretty happy. Inside the balloon arch, I cut a large pink and blue crawfish out of poster board. I want to say that was quick but after drawing and cutting all of the little legs and antennas out, I would say I have about an hour and a half invested in those haha. For the background, I wanted to use the white sheet I used at our wedding for our photo booth, but I think it got lost in the wedding craziness so I went for plan B and last-minute cut the fitted sheet it came with into a white square piece of fabric. I wish I had time to iron it but it is what it is lol.

Just to add to the number of balloons I had Cody blow up, I also bought this giant “OH BABY” balloon to hang on the garage door where we shot off the canons for the gender reveal. I’, not sure what happened, buy the Y on “baby” deflated before the reveal pretty badly (I think it hit the bush in the wind) but overall, I was super happy with this purchase from Amazon too!

Above the dessert/ hor devours table, I bought this “name your own banner” kit to put our saying “We’re boiling over with excitement to know what baby will be.” I ended up buying two kits because I was nervous I would run out of letters and I’m going glad I did because I wouldn’t have had enough T’s!

As I’ve mentioned, I love Canva, so I made two signs for the party there. One was for the “old wives tales” and one asked people to grab a blue or pink necklace to show off their guesses of the baby’s gender. I get my posters printed at Walgreens on the “board prints” hard plastic (which seems to ALWAYS have a 50% off coupon if you search the internet.) I got the blue necklaces from Michaels for $4 for 24 necklaces and then got the pink ones from our local grocery store, HEB, for $7 and change since our Michaels didn’t carry pink. Or you can find them in bulk on Amazon here. Here are the posters below. I’ll remove the “circles” from my wife’s tales so you can print it and circle it yourself if you’d like!

I also went to Hobby Lobby and grabbed some pink and blue confetti, cupcake and cake toppers, and one banner for the fireplace. I bought three rolls of ribbon to make bows for the front doors: one dotted pink and blue, one light blue, and one light pink. They really didn’t have a lot in the pre-made decorations department at my store. But I did buy the poster boards as well as pink and blue bandanas for the dogs to wear here as well.

The Confetti Canons:

After doing some research, I decided to buy our confetti canons from here. They have over a thousand 5 star reviews and seemed to be the best bang (literally) for your buck. I was SUPER impressed by these canons as they had a ton of confetti, shot really high into the air, and were only $2.50 each! We bought 20 canons to achieve the video below so every household got at least one canon out of our 30 guest party. I like that the canons were completely black and white and had no markings to see if pink or blue was inside. Also, the tops were completely sealed so there was no way to peak! To be safe though, I did hide the box of canons until it was time. With so many kiddos around and adults with white claws lol, I didn’t want anyone to spoil the surprise if they were in plain sight.

Outfits:

I decided that I wanted Cody in blue and me in pink for the party as well as our boy dog, Benson, in blue, and Zoe in pink. I ordered the CUTEST pink maxi dress for the party, and even paid for the expedited shipping and sadly it did not arrive in time. I grabbed this $20 summer sweater dress in pink and white stripes as a last-minute backup. It ended up being VERY hot outside so I was happy in my short dress, plus the tie waist showed off the little bump!

I think I’ve covered all of the details about the party, but if I’m missing anything, feel free to leave a comment on this blog post and I’ll get back to you.