Inspiration for parties, themes, and color palettes can come to me from anywhere. In the case of this 365 Days on Earth first birthday party, the inspiration was from a children’s song. The idea first came to me while I was listening to Hullabaloo’s album, Shy Kid Blues. I just knew I had to create a first birthday party theme based on Steve’s rollicking song about a year in the life entitled 365 Days on Earth.

I knew that I wanted the concept for this party to center around globes and to include lots of quotes directly from the song. When I started pulling together a visual inspiration board, it became clear that I wanted to pair the globes with some modern black and white elements and maybe some hexagon patterning. I love how the blues, yellows, and greens of the globe came together with the black and white.

Shelves

While the shelves in my dining room usually house my cookbook collection and family mementos, I couldn’t help styling them especially for this party. I lined the back of the shelves with black and white striped paper before filling them with lots of fun decorations. My hand-painted globe was joined by a small collection of other globes in different colors and sizes. Photos of the birthday boy and coordinating party decor rounded out the shelf display.

Dessert table

Again, I used bold black and white stripes to set the backdrop of the dessert table. Layered on top of the stripes was a balloon garland to bring in some color. Every party needs a cake, and we had a stunning 2-tiered beauty. Jenny Wenny cakes managed to incorporate the stripes, world map, and a cool hexagons honeycomb pattern into one delicious cake. The crowning touch was a laser-cut acrylic topper boasting the theme of 365 Days on Earth. Incorporating custom cookies into my events has become a requirement for me. I’m always looking for unique ways to display the beautiful cookie creations, so this time I decided to hang them on an ornament stand. The idea was to make the Earth cookies look more like an actual globe and I love the results. NatSweets made so many fun cookie designs using my invitation design and the song lyrics. We also had some hand-painted globe gourmet apples. Roni’s Sugar Creations always takes care of the details and these apples were no exception. A little bit of glittery sparkle and the pretty striped bows finished them off beautifully.

Cake smash

I love a good cake smash and I was really looking forward to seeing my son’s first taste of cake. The stage was set with some party streamers, a little ONE banner, and the same vintage wood highchair that we used for my daughter’s cake smash 5 years ago. Although I outsourced the other sweets for the party, I baked Declan’s little smash cake- banana cake with cream cheese frosting. He was pretty cautious when it came time to eat it. He seemed to like it, but I don’t think he was thrilled with all of the people watching him.

Guest tables

Oversized engineering prints are one of my favorite ways to incorporate my printables into the party decor. This time I also used this product to create custom paper table runners for the guest tables. I’ve always loved the trend of the first birthday chalkboard statistics (height, weight, nickname, favorites, skills, words, etc.). I took this concept and turned all those fun facts into a unique table runner. I printed 2 on a 24″x36″ color engineering print and simply cut it down the middle. Blooms in yellow and white sat in the middle of both tables for the guests to enjoy.

Favor table

Favors can sometimes be an afterthought for me, but this time I knew what I wanted to gift to our guests right away. It was important to me to send everyone home with some goodies from Hullabaloo since the band’s song inspired the party theme. Hullabaloo CD’s and Shy Kid Blues Coloring books were the perfect items to include from the band. I packaged them up in little black baskets and finished them off with crayons, globe punching bags, #1 balloon wands, and black and white lollipops.