First Birthday Garden Party

For our daughter’s first birthday party we decided to host the party in our backyard. She has a spring birthday and it would give the kids plenty of room to run around. We started with the butterfly invitation from Tiny Prints and I scoured the stores starting in February for decorations or craft items. The baskets and garlands from World Market were perfect and we built the rest around those colors and designs. We took one of the baskets to the bakery and asked them to design a cake to match it. We entertain a lot so we had most of the serving dishes but decided to add some kid friendly non-breakable additions and some outdoor tablecloths. Since we had boys and girls we made sure we had lots of colors with some pink thrown in. We also had several ages of kids and lots of adults so we varied the activities and menu to match. We had lots of bubble toys, a tub of rubber frogs, a splash table and balls for the kids to play with. For the menu, we had chicken salad sandwiches, tomato tarts, melon balls, bug shaped mac and cheese, pbj sandwiches and ham and cheese sandwiches, chocolate covered pretzels and cheerios along with the cake and cupcakes. For beverages we had water, juice boxes, lemonade and raspberry lemonade punch. For favors we had bubbles and a rubber frog for all of the kids.