Baby Zinn Gender Reveal - A Simple, Stress Free Reveal

When I got pregnant, I wasn't sure that I wanted to do a gender reveal. It sounded exhausting doing all that planning and I'm really not a surprise kind of person. I knew I would want to know what we were having and that I would be really pissed off if one of my friends knew what I was having before I did. But when we realized that our doctors appointment would fall on a weekend that wasn't covered in weddings or showers, I decided we could do a modified gender reveal.  We basically had our friends over, set off multiple smoke bombs, almost gave it away multiple times and ate lots of awesome food!

We normally try to do potluck parties to help spread out the cost.  But that also sounded like a lot of effort to me, so I pleanned a really simple cookout menu and did everything myself

Baby Zinn Gender Reveal Menu

Grilled Burgers and Hot Dogs
Baked Macaroni and Cheese (similar recipe)
Bush's Maple and Bacon Baked Beans
Fruit Salad with Orange Vanilla Syrup

The mac and cheese recipe is an old famiily recipe that we really don't give out (I can't give away my secret party recipe!), but I've linked to a similar one.  And the fruit salad is one of my absolute favorites! I was able to put everything together ahead of time, so I didn't have a lot of prep work or cooking right before the party. And the best party? All of my serving dishes were in the dishwasher at the end of the night!

For the decorations, I bought some baby pumpkins at the grocery store and painted them with acrylic paint.

I painted them over the course of two days. I did half pink and half blue.  I think they turned out really cute!

For the reveal, I had my friend Sarah make cupcakes.  Then Aaron decided he wanted to do smoke bombs, so we did those too! Here's our video from our reveal.

Not shown in the video, is our friend Josh ready with the hose in case we caught anything on fire!

At the end of the night, I made sure to get a photo of everyone all together. I loved having most of our friends with us to celebrate.  It made an already exciting event that much more special.

Here's to our little man, we can't wait to meet you!