Hudson’s 1st Mustache Bash

Description

A mustache and bow tie theme party for Hudson's 1st birthday

Design Inspiration

Hudson is our little gentleman and I wanted play off that.  I loved the idea of mustaches and bow ties as they represent old world gentleman style.  I wanted to put a bit of a modern spin on it.  I think the colors really popped and the polka dots were a great contrast.

Decorating Style

I love bold colors.  I also really like DIY.  I made most of the decorations for this party myself. It helps everything feel really personal and special.  Seeing the joy on his face when he saw the decorations up was a great feeling.

Project Details

I made all of the banners, streamers and posters myself.  As well as the straws.

Bow tie & Mustache streamers:  I got mustache and bow tie templates off of the internet. I cut them out of cardboard to use as stencils for the paper.  I bought multicolor and black packs of paper at Michael's.  I also bought a roll of black yarn from Michael's to use as the string.  After cutting out lots of mustaches and bow ties I used a single hole punch and threaded the yarn.

Banner: I got the letter template from the Martha Stewart website and printed them out on regular paper.  The polka dot paper behind the letters is wrapping paper that I cut into squares.  The flags are the same black card stock I used for the mustaches.  I used a glue stick to put everything together.  Then I used a craft knife to make small slits in the flags and used a pretty ribbon I already had to string the letters together.

Mustache straws:  I bought the striped paper straws plain from Oriental Trading in blue and lime green.  I then used regular school glue to add the paper mustaches.  Super simple!

The Welcome poster and Hudson is One poster:  I designed them in Microsoft Word, playing with the fonts and colors to get the look just right.  Added some simple graphics and printed them on 11x17 paper.  I then cut large pieces of cardboard from boxes that I wrapped with regular wrapping paper.  Once the background was ready I used a glue stick to attach the posters.

The Cakes:  My friend, Kris, has her own business. She designs the most amazing cakes.  She used Hudson's birthday T-shirt and hat as inspiration for the cakes.  www.kakesbykrisota.com I loved the way both cakes turned out. Hudson loved his smash cake!

My sister is a wonderful knitter.  She made all of the knit bow ties that were party favors for the guests.  www.toledostalents.weebly.com

Hudson's custom made number 1 mustache T-shirt and birthday hat were bought on Etsy.

The plates and napkins were bought from Oriental Trading.

Photography by Lesley Kim, www.lesleykimphotography.com

 

Favorite Items

The Happy Birthday Hudson Banner.  This is my favorite thing of all of the decorations.  I was really pleased with the way this came out and I know I will be able to use it again.  It looked so great against the wall and was exactly what I was hoping for when I started the project.

Advice

There are a lot ready made mustache items out there right now.  You don't have to do everything yourself, but you can choose to do a few things to make it a little unique.  Cutting out mustaches and bow ties yourself will be a little time consuming, but it can be a project for the whole family to pitch in with.  Choose one or two colors to stand out against all of the black mustaches.