So we celebrated my daughter’s first birthday over the weekend a few weekends ago.  First and foremost, that first year went by super fast.  I know it went fast with my son, but boy does it just happen faster with the second.  I feel like she was just born and suddenly she’s walking, talking, and turning more and more into a little girl.  But enough with the tears, you probably are interested in the party details for inspiration for your next soirée.

First, I didn’t quite have a concrete theme like cars or a princess party.  I did, however, have a color scheme in my head–pink and gold with hints of black.  So I went to Michael’s and bought the supplies, which included a lot of cardstock.  They had an ombre pack of pink cardstock, and so then it evolved into ombre pink and gold with hints of black.  I then ran with it when it came to party decorations, and that soon evolved into ombre pink circles and gold stars.

All our younger guests hung out in the play area where our kids have all their toys.  I also bought a cheap blow up baby pool and created a ball pit.  This was such a hit at the party; even the 9 year old loved hanging out in the pit.  I arranged the seating to be against the wall so that the parents can watch their kids playing in the middle.

I also set up a kiddie snack table for the toddlers/kids.  I created the bunting with my Silhouette Portrait, some craft tape, and pink twine, and it says, “Sammy’s Fave Snacks.”  We have an adjustable height table that we used to make the snacks accessible for our little guests.  I put out some apple sauce, teething biscuits, raisins, and Cheerios.  In hindsight, I should have probably put the Cheerios and raisins in a resealable bag since one of the tots decided to dump all the raisins into one big pile on the table.

I also made these buntings.  The top one I used two different sized circle hole punches and a star hole punch, and then a sewing machine to string them all together.  It was actually pretty simple and my son liked to collect the different shapes and put them into piles for me.  I made 2 different and very long ones that we strung up around the house and cut down to size.

The middle set of pictures is the monthly picture bunting I made, again using my Silhouette Portrait, craft tape, a hot glue gun, clothes pins, and pink twine.  I then printed the pictures at Costco and they were ready in an hour for $.17 each I think.

The bottom picture is of the monthly picture bunting and another bunting that says, “Sammy Is One.”  I made that bunting with acrylic paint, stencils, black canvas bunting panels that were black, and then strung them together with pink twine.

For Sammy’s high chair, I used the same blank canvas bunting panels to make the ONE, and strung it up with pink twine and just taped it onto a high chair.  And then we just added some balloons to make the chair more festive.

The bottom picture is the cake table.  The left is the cake for all of our guests and the right cake is her little smash cake (which Sammy was sooooo not interested in at all).  They were made by a local baker called Occassionally Cake.  They made my baby shower cake, and they did a great simple job on my daughter’s cake.  And the cakes were sooooooo good!

I also did the first year stats on my Silhouette Portrait.  It was actually a bit of a pain at first–basically if you have fonts with a lot of intricate designs, it made Silhouette Studio crash.  After tinkering around, I found something that worked and I’m actually really pleased with the design.  It actually isn’t that hard to change out the pens to have it write what you want.  I then got a frame from Michaels, that also happened to be 50% off.  So a fairly cheap project that looks really great.

Finally, the party favors.  I bought the mini bubble wands from Oriental Trading for fairly cheap.  And the tags I made with my Silhouette Portrait.  I then attached it with pink twine.  These were a great give away for kids since the age range of our young guests were 10 months to 9 years old.  Everyone loves bubbles!  I stuck them in an old pink Easter egg bucket and put it by the door so I wouldn’t forget to give them away to the kids.

Overall, the party went well.  Everything that I made was fairly simple and easy to whip up, so didn’t take up much time overall (although I did spread it out over a month and many many many trips to Michaels).  I also think the pink ombre and then adding gold and black accents helped to deaden that in-your-face-pink you see with some girl birthday parties.  Basically I was looking to do something feminine, but also not gaudy.  Hopefully I achieved that and have sparked some ideas for your next party.