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Rock ‘n’ Roll 1st Birthday Party

I really wanted to stretch my creative wings and step out of the box to create a design that was true to my son’s personality. From the moment I could feel Ante in my belly, he had a strong response to music. It seemed like he was constantly rocking out! Born with a jet black mohawk to boot! Cool wasn’t even the word. Too bad, we had to give him a cut before his 1st birthday bash but his locks were impossible to maintain! So from the beginning, Ante was our little rockstar! I played around with the idea of a rock & roll theme for months before I actively started planning. I wanted it to be modern and edgy but still feel like a kids party. Ironically during many sleepless nights of miserable teething bouts, I decided to take on a major DIY project. I wasn’t sleeping anyway, right? Studded leather (faux) placemats! The entire tabletop design vibed off these babies. It was labor of love, each one handmade but the end result was well worth it! I paired these with vintage vinyl record menus set against gold napkins and square plates. The place settings were finished off with sumi wash place cards. Dark and moody florals loosely composed in matte black vases softened the tablescapes and gave the space pops of unexpected color. The lucite chairs accented the room, while the beautiful color and texture of the forest green velvet linens took the spotlight. I incorporated many elements from the tablescapes into the dessert display. A leather vinyl backdrop, pyramid stud cakes and rock candy were displayed amongst vintage amplifiers for a fun and eclectic look. Best of all, we celebrated with our dearest people with delicious sips and bites at our favorite local restaurant while jamming out to my cousin’s rock band. I couldn’t think of a better (or cooler) way to celebrate my baby boy’s first year of life!

Avonley’s Pink and Gold 1st Birthday Party

I started planning my daughters 1st birthday about three months prior to her actually birthday.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do and what theme I wanted. I know that I didn’t want to go with a character theme, I wanted it to be an elegant party so I decided to base the party around Pink and Sparkle Gold.
I enjoy crafting so, I had made and painted the majority of the decorations for the party!
Instead of doing the traditional loot bags for the children, I thought it would be fun to make pink and gold tutus for the tiny girls and bowties for the little boys.
I had a heck of a time trying to figure out how I would display these tutus and bowties. So I stopped into the local dump store and found these beautiful California Shutters for only $10! I brought them home, disinfected them and gave them a coat of paint! Viola……..a beautiful display stand!
The lovely cake and all the goodies on the cake table are made by a wonderful baker that I have been using for almost 10 years! She is absolutely amazing! Please check her out jennybsweet.weebly.com
We have an amazing photographer that captures the best moments for our family. Please check her out at: https://www.facebook.com/CherishedMomentsByCherylSmith/
We had so much fun with this party.
 

365 Days on Earth Birthday Party

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.
 

Evelyn Pearl’s Fancy 1st Birthday Party

After having two boys, I was thrilled and excited to throw my sweet little girl a fancy, frilly, lacy, girly first birthday party! Initially I had ideas of a chic vintage tea party, but in the end I steered clear of any true “theme,” and just went with “girly and fancy.”
This was a true DIY party, as I made all the decorations myself. I really enjoy crafting, so I had a lot of fun creating the details for the party.
We had about 25 people (children and adults) at the party. The kids enjoyed playing a couple party games, breaking open the piñata, and jumping on the trampoline. The adults enjoyed mingling and eating, and reminiscing about how fast the past year had gone.
As guests arrived, I asked to get a picture of our family with theirs right away before everyone got lost in the shuffle. I then printed the pictures right form my phone (my printer is wireless) and put them on display at the party. (This whole part was my husbands idea!) We then sent everyone home with their picture. This was a hit with the guests!
The menu consisted of chicken salad croissants with havarti cheese, sausage pinwheels, ham and cheese pinwheels, bacon and cheddar quiche, fresh fruit, assorted chocolate cookies and wafers, personalized sugar cookies, lady fingers, apple stuffed sugar pastries, mini chocolate chip muffins, mini blueberry muffins, mini chocolate cupcakes, mini red velvet cupcakes, and of course, a smash cake for the birthday girl! A close friend of mine is an amazingly talented baker, and she made the personalized sugar cookies for me!
One of my favorite parts was when we sang Happy Birthday! I bought a sparkler candle in the shape of an “E” at a boutique near by. The sparklers were so awesome. It was definitely the coolest candle I had ever seen.
We created a time capsule by asking the guests to write down a memory, wish, or letter for the birthday girl.
In addition to the DIY decorations, I displayed pictures of Evelyn’s “firsts,” as well as the baby book scrapbook I made for her over her first year.
We sent the kiddos home with their piñata candy, as well as a personalized mini planter with some seeds for them to plant.
The day turned out to be everything I hoped it would be and more!

It’s A Circus Over Here 1st Birthday Boy Party

I have always loved birthdays, so when it came time to throw our first baby his 1st birthday I knew I wanted it to be perfect. I wanted to keep it low stress and make a lot of the decor my self but also make sure that it was baby friendly with bold, bright colors and lots of fun! Some people say that the 1st birthday is just for the parents, but I gave our son Ryker lots of new objects to entertain and spark curiosity. Babies love shiny things and since it was his ‘golden’ birthday I decided to add gold details. I love how it turned out and we had so much fun celebrating this little boy’s first year with us! My advice would be to not stress, make the party what you want. Set some goals and then go for it!

Cove’s Modern Jungle First Birthday Party

When it came time for us to start thinking about a theme for Cove’s first birthday, I knew I wanted it to be from something we experienced together as a family during his first year of life. We were able to take Cove to both the Atlanta Zoo and the San Diego Zoo this year and he loved it. Since we had such great memories there together as a family, I decided to do a modern jungle theme. We have always used #gocove since before he was born, so we played on that to theme the party GO COVE, GO WILD.
We tied together modern themes like geometric patterns and African Mudcloth patterns to build out the branding and design. My husband and I did the logo and invites ourselves, and then had them printed. We also crafted handmade geometric photo frames to hold the Polaroid’s that we had people take at the party as party favors. Then we added jungle greenery and tiny zoo animals to the scheme and it pulled it all together.
It was a day of pure bliss being able to watch Cove dive into his cake and seeing his loved ones there. And it will always be a special memory for us.
You can view more photos and details of the party on The Southern Trunk here.

Jacob’s Barnyard Birthday Party

For Jacob’s very first birthday party, we decided to play homage to his favorite things: barnyard animals. Despite living in the city (and having no outdoor space), we turned our home into a “barnyard” where family and friends celebrated Jacob special day.
We chose a traditional barnyard color scheme of red, white, and blue — and added pops of gold. I threw red and white gingham table clothes over pieces of furniture to create “picnic tables,” and accessorized with crates and actual bales of hay. Paper pinwheels in blue and gold were hung on the walls, along with a “ONE” balloon.
For food, we ate “piggies in a blanket” (aka mini hotdogs), “rabbit feed” (aka salad), “garden fresh veggies” (aka crudités), mac ‘n cheese, mini meatballs, and an assortment of cheeses (for the mice). Our “watering hole” of beverages included homemade spiced apple cider, champagne, and beer that we drank out of mason jars. For dessert, guests feasted on bales of hay (rice krispie treats) and carrot cake cupcakes accessorized with sugar barnyard animals. My favorite part of the party was watching Jacob enjoy his homemade smash cake, which was decorated with cream cheese “grass” frosting, a brown fence, and a duck and a pig (Jacob’s favorite animals).
Everyone had a blast and Jacob loved being the center of attention. Such a special day that we’ll remember forever!

Luka’s Lumberjack Bash

I wanted my little babe’s birthday to be COZY and mainly outdoors so the kids could play! SO, I made a s’mores bar for kids to roast marshmallow’s, a hot chocolate stand and of course a fully stocked sweets table! The theme was lumberjack and everything was handmade by me! My grandmother helped with the log cake which was ah-mazing and fit in perfectly with the theme of his birthday party. Such a hit!

Lana’s Butterfly Flower Garden 1st Birthday Party

My daughter Lana Rose turned one on August 16th, 2016, and it was a very special milestone for us. Lana was born a 24-week micro-preemie and spent a long six months at the hospital before being able to come home. It has been a long and at times emotional and stressful road for all of us, but also very fun and rewarding. We wanted to make a big splash in honor of Lana’s 1st birthday, and we were fortunate that many friends and relatives flew in for the big day!
Theme:
The theme of her birthday was a butterfly flower garden, and was very similar in color and scheme to her nursery. She even wore a custom dress using the same beautiful fabrics from her nursery (“Winged” pattern by Bonnie Christine)! The butterfly has a very special meaning and symbolism for us. Since our daughter was born 4 months early and was very tiny (12 oz, 10.5 inches) and fragile at birth, she fit in the palm of our hand, kind of like a little caterpillar. Immediately after her birth, she was intubated and placed inside an isolette, where she lived for over four months. Her isolette came to represent a butterfly’s chrysalis. And every day, she grew bigger, stronger and over time, she grew her wings and emerged as a beautiful butterfly!
Location:
We chose a beautiful outdoor pavilion close to our home as the venue for her birthday. We wanted something outside, to take advantage of the gorgeous summer weather. It was really spacious and simple, which allowed us to infuse the space with tons of beautiful colors and decorations that perfectly represented the theme and feeling we wanted for her birthday: light, airy, whimsical, youthful and very feminine.
Colors:
Pastels! Everything from lavender, mint, peach, blush, pink, blue and yellow pastels were the name of the game. To me, those colors will always be in style, and were the perfect mix for a butterfly garden party! We carried those colors throughout, from the decor, to the tablecloths, flowers (both real as well as the tissue paper flowers I made), plates, napkins and desserts.
Decorations:
The main focus for the decorations were the big, beautiful and multi-colored pastel tissue paper flowers. I made each one of these by hand, months in advance of the party. I worked on creating a few each night before going to bed, and before long, I had close to a hundred flowers for the party! These were actually a lot easier to make than I originally thought. I found a few YouTube tutorials, and voila! The flowers were used as a backdrop behind the two buffet areas (lunch and desserts). I added tons of pastel butterflies with clip backings right on the flowers themselves. I found the beautiful butterfly clips at Michaels as well as The Dollar Store, and they came in very handy.  I also used the butterflies on the tables and in the flower arrangements on the tables. And pretty much anywhere that we could clip on a butterfly, we did!
My husband’s cousin helped to create the flower arrangements for each of the tables. I bought various-sized mason jars at The Goodwill, and decorated each one with different pastel ribbons, twine, burlap and lace. No two were alike! For flowers, I bought a bunch of baby’s breath, hydrangeas, pastel roses (full size blooms and tea roses), as well as lavender and yellow chrysanthemums. We were going for a somewhat “shabby-chic” look with the arrangements, and they came out great! I also used antique tea cups as part of the decorations on the tables, which I purchased from Etsy, as well.
Desserts:
A good friend of mine is a gourmet baker and has her own business, Bella Nava Creations. She is an incredibly talented baker and decorator, and she made the amazing sugar cookies, cake pops and cupcakes with cream cheese frosting (yum!). I really wanted the desserts, and the dessert buffet, to not only be edible and delicious, but also part of the decor. And Brandie did just that! They were a huge hit, and so yummy!

LumberJack Logging Camp 1st Birthday Party

When it came time to plan our baby boy’s 1st birthday, my husband and I thought of having a small and simple picnic birthday breakfast at our nearby wetlands center. Of course, I had to take it a step further (more like 200 steps further) and throw a theme onto this wonderful picnic idea. Since his nursery design is an “outdoor” theme, I wanted to create a picnic party in keeping with that and set a stage that resembles the space he loves most – His Room!
While browsing and researching “Lumberjacks”, I ran into an old vintage photo of real Lumberjacks having breakfast at a “Logging Camp”. I thought how perfect would that be to re-create a similar scene! So my handy dandy husband made a beautiful toddler harvest table out of old pallet wood we had laying around, stained and sealed it and before you know it our “Logging Camp” breakfast was born!
The Food Buffet consisted of yummy breakfast items and a few treats for the kiddos. We had breakfast Sausage “TIMBER LOGS”, fresh mixed berries “BERRY PICKING”, mini pancakes with maple syrup “FLAP JACKS” w/ “TREE SAP” & Graduates lil crunchies “CAMPFIRE FLAMES”. We washed everything down with either apple juice “RIVER WATER” or chocolate milk “MUDDY PUDDLE”. In keeping with our outdoor Logging/Lumberjack theme, I called upon Marcia from the amazing custom cookie shop here in town, Yaya’s Sweets & Treats to create these adorable cookies that represented The Great Outdoors!  These were so beautifully done, I was hesitant to let anyone touch them, much less eat them.
The Cake I made the night before. I found cakes that look like tree stumps on Pinterest and thought what an awesome touch that would be to our party in the woods. So I melted caramel candies to ice the top of the cake and melted then refrigerated chocolate melts, broke them apart and used them as the outer shell of the cake to resemble bark. I used a toy moose and trees I found at Michaels as toppers.
I found a few clipart images online, printed them out and glued them to wooden dowels to create last minute photo booth props. Even though we didn’t necessarily have a “Photo Booth”, we had fun posing with the different silhouettes.
His birthday gift from my husband and I was the adorable felt campfire set from the wonderful Shop, Three Wee Monkeys on Etsy.
We had such a wonderful morning celebrating our baby boy! Its moments like this that just make me want to hold my family even tighter, as I feel so blessed to be apart of this little tribe and look forward to more memorable moments ahead!

Landon’s Party Like a Pineapple 1st Birthday Party

I have always loved pineapples and everything they stand for—tropical places, summertime, and fun! A few years ago, I saw a pineapple-themed party hosted by the lovely Jenny Cookies, and I fell in lovvvvvve! Since then, pineapples & pineapple parties have been everywhere, and I have enjoyed seeing all of the different ideas online, especially on Pinterest. And off course, as soon as I found out we were pregnant & having a summer baby, I knew I’d plan the first birthday theme around pineapples.
For sources and additional information, please visit my blog: Here Comes Baby.

DIY Dr. Seuss 1st Birthday Party!

Today you are You, that is TRUER than true. There is NO ONE alive who is YOUER than YOU!
August 31st, 60 years ago – both of my parents were born in the same hospital, 58 years ago – my husband’s stepfather was born and 1 year ago – our sweet baby boy was born and forever changed our lives. How could we celebrate four very important people in our lives? By throwing a Dr. Seuss themed party, of course! Dr. Seuss was the perfect inspiration for these big milestones with so many ‘Things’ to celebrate! I knew I wanted to make most of decorations so I headed to Pinterest and gathered all the Dr. Seuss themed ideas I could find. Red and different shades of blue were going to be the main colors I would be incorporating into the birthday bash. I had just learned how to sew and I wanted to put those skills to work. I found tutorials on how to make flag banners, high chair banners and giant numbers. No party is complete without a spectacular birthday cake, I found Dr. Seuss inspired themed cake ideas on Pinterest and brought them to a local bakery (Stella Cakes in Lafayette, LA), to create 3 smash cakes for the ‘Things’ of honor and one sharable cake for our guests. I found digital food cards on Etsy to label our scrumptious snacks that were all inspired from the Dr. Seuss books. You can’t have a 1st birthday without a birthday board memorializing all your achievements in your first year of life – I found the perfect Dr. Seuss themed birthday board on Etsy. How are you supposed to remember who to came to the party? Happy Birthday to You was the perfect guest sign book – I found the cutest sign in sheet on Etsy to let the guest know to leave the special birthday boy a message to treasure for all his ages. I also found Dr. Seuss themed school supplies in the dollar section at Target to fill the party favors with. All in all, this was such a fun party to plan and I look forward to year 61, 59 and 2!

Lis Loves Sesame Street Birthday Party

When Lis was turning one and I had to pick a theme for her birthday party, there was nothing else that came to mind besides Elmo! That was her favorite character up to that point. She loved his monster friends, the songs and everything sesame!
Because there were other small children attending, we created a baby corner with rubber flooring and baby toys for their entertainment.
Besides the party favor bags for the children, we gave an Elmo photo holder for everyone to take. The relatives seem to love that. Especially aunts and grandmas!

A Little Monsters First Birthday!

Our little monster turned one on Saturday and we decided what would be more fitting than a Little Monster themed birthday party.
We chose bright colours that pop with joy! Everything was home made by me (mum). I sewed little monsters out of felt with the sign ‘Adopt a Monster’ for each child to take home with them. Each gift bag was personalised and had a little monster badge on that I cut out and designed myself. Inside the gift bag was a bottle of bubbles, play dough, stickers and a slinky, closed with a glitter peg and name tag.
We decorated the table in a green, orange and blue theme. I made paper bunting for the walls and used blue lanterns for the backdrop. We had an array of food, including marshmallow dipped monster heads, star sandwiches, monster cupcakes and sugar free blueberry muffins for the kids… and the cake of course! Chocolate with vanilla buttercream icing, and a fondant bottom.
One year down – can’t wait to start planning the next party!

Jackson’s Under the Sea 1st Birthday

My husband and I are avid scuba divers so when it came time to chose a theme for Jackson’s 1st Birthday, there was no doubt what it would be.  It was so much fun to see our love for all things underwater come to life in ways that a child would enjoy.  In years to come, I know Jackson will choose his own themes and that I may not like them all so I really enjoyed the chance to create an Under the Sea party while he would let me!