Baby's First Birthday Party!!

         My son's birthday was a few weeks ago and since it was going to be my first rodeo at this type of thing I really wanted things to go as smoothly as possible. I have a lot of nephews and nieces and there were a few of my friends and their kids that I wanted to invite so the attendance list was HUGE. Of the 31 that were invited 25 showed. That is a lot of people for me and probably a bit overboard for a first birthday, but who cares right? I dont think there's a rule book on first birthdays... Is there?
         If you're like me you may have an enormous Pinterest collection of projects you only dream of doing. Well no more! I made some of the decorations I pinned a while ago and used them for the party. I also wanted to be able to focus more on my child and taking pictures rather than sort of conducting the activities and whatnot, so I thought what better way than to set up activity booths and let the kids just go at it? I think it went pretty well. Here's what I did...

(By the way, I was running super late and didnt get to take pictures prior to everyone arriving, so these pictures were taken after the party was over and things were a little messy...)

Front Door

Had arrows leading all the way to the backyard. BAM! Didn't have to answer the door.

Table Decorations

This was the first thing you saw once outside. It was also covered in food and rainbow cupcakes but like I said these pictures were taken after the party ended. I saw that geometrical banner here sparkyandmarie.com and fell in love with it! I made mine out of felt sewn together so it could be reused for years to come. 

Maybe you have seen all those freaking adorable chalkboard birthday signs all over pinterest? I LOVE those things! I didn't have a giant chalkboard nor did I want to pay for one (because lets be honest, I hate spending money.) so I bought a black poster board, a silver metallic marker and used some jelly pens to make my own. 

I mixed two ideas here for a centerpiece. It cracks me up!!!

 That little party hat. Ha!!

Here's where I got this... 

Baby faces - www.craftgawker.com

Gumball birthday jar- www.jacolynmurphy.com

Directions To The Bathroom

BAM! I didn't have to show anyone where the bathroom was.

 I had arrows leading all the way to the bathroom. 

It was easy for kids and adults! :-D

Activity Stations

The Coloring Station

I set up a little picnic table with a cute polka dot tablecloth from the dollar store, a basket of crayons (also from the dollar store) and a basket of alphabet coloring pages i found online. 

I found the animal pictures for the signs online and colored them. Then I pasted them to some blue or orange poster board. My hope was that everyone would color a page at some point for an alphabet book I would put together and laminate at Lakeshore learning. I only got a handful of pages so Ill be doing a lot of coloring in my near future.  A fine excuse to be a kid again, even for a little while.

The Bubble Station

Man, what a terrible picture. Sorry ya'll. 

I had a few bubble containers on the table. Baby C loves bubbles. :-)

Table cloth and small bubbles from Dollar Tree.

The Photo Booth

And again, terrible pictures. Sorry! 

This was the photo booth. I hung the sign from some wind chimes in the tree, wrapped streamers around the trunk for the kids to stand in front of for a simple backdrop and got a bunch of animal photo props (they were actually on clearance at Michaels for 89 cents). We took pictures of the kids and emailed them to the parents.

Trampoline Station

I just slapped this on one of the legs of the trampoline.

Ball Toss Station

I made this ball toss a couple weeks before the party. Obviously Calvin isn't able to really play with it properly, but he likes watching/ following the older kids. He also liked putting the ball in the turtle. 

I put the ball toss tutorial in the next post... Enjoy!

High Chair and Smash Cake

I made this really simple high chair sign on the computer. I made two smash cakes. One was super healthy, made of mainly bananas and applesauce, and the other was a traditional white confetti cake in case the healthy one didnt work out. Guess what. It didnt. It wouldn't really solidify for some reason so I gave him the other. He loved that cake, obviously! 

For the final touch I wrapped streamers around all of the beams under the upper deck.

         So that's that! This was BC's first birthday party. We had fun, ate some burgers, smashed some cake! Dont forget to check out my ball toss tutorial in the next post!

Have a great week and watch 

Kristen Bell's Birthday Surprise Meltdown

and 

Adorable Little Ladies Rockin Out!