Baby Birthday Bash

My son recently celebrated a momentous occasion, his first birthday! It seems every week one of his little buddies is turning 1, which means we’ve been partying it up. I know the “experts” have a lot to say about baby birthdays: Keep it small; invite no more than three babies; parties should not last longer than one hour. Yada, yada.

Well, I ignored all that and hosted a full-blown fiesta. I mean, c’mon, the first year is a big deal, not just for kiddos, but for us parents, too. We survived 12 months of spit-up and poopy diapers, and we want to celebrate! Here are some party tips I picked up along the way for celebrating the big 1!

• Instead of gift bags, burn CDs with your kid’s favorite tunes. Babies love music, even mellow adult music, so break out the Joni Mitchell and John Lennon and create a playlist that won’t make your friends cringe.

• Make decorations instead of buying streamers. I cut big circles out of construction paper, taped them to fishing line, and hung them from the ceiling above the food (see photo at top). Babies were oblivious, but the adults liked it. People thought it looked like a floating Twister.

• Balloons pack a one-two punch, as decoration and parting gift. Let a bunch float freely in your living room. When the party’s over, each kid can take one home.

• Making cute tablecloths can be cheap and easy. I found cowboy material at the fabric store and used the stitchery witchery tape (such as Singer’s fusing web) to iron a hem around the frayed edges (see photo above). No sewing required! If you’re low on fabric, just make runners to put on top of cheapo plastic tablecloths.

• Get a dessert YOU like. You’d be hard-pressed to find a parent who will let their 1-year-old scarf down sugary cake and ice cream. That’s for next year. I ordered  cupcakes from a local specialty cupcake shop, but I mixed in lots of mini-cupcakes to keep costs down.

• If you want to treat the grownups to a big, homemade lunch, pick recipes that can be made days ahead and served at room temp, since the food will be sitting out. Orzo salad with tomatoes and sugar snaps was a hit with my guests. And muffalettas turned out to be perfect party food since the sandwiches taste better if they sit overnight in the fridge.

Got a big tip for the little ones? Let us know in the comments below.

Comments

Where did you get that adorable green cupcake holder? I need one!

Hi Meems, I found the cupcake holder at Target in the Easter section. It was only $9!

Loved your ideas!!! Might have to steal the "cd' idea for when my little makes 1 this summer! And I know what you are saying about the "experts". When my 1st daughter made 1, knowing it was indoors, I wanted something a little different from what I was accustomed to seeing. Coming from the caribbean, you would be surprised how most of our kids parties are generic in nature. Anyways, I carried the color theme from my baby shower, into her christening and finnaly her 1st b'day. It was pink and purple. To put in the gift bags - I go me pink and purple M&M's peanut for the big kids and the chocolate ones for the little kids. Pink milk duds as well! (Not for the babies though). I played a fiary tales cd one side music the other side story telling. And I aslo had a cupcake tier for the "cake"! Which I loved the best because there was nothing to cut, clean-up (crumbs) or put away and the kids loved it!

Everyone knows a baby's first birthday party is not for the baby, it's for the parents. So why not go all out?! :)

When our family gets together for a kids party, we began noticing that the little kids would practically push one another aside for a chance to be the one to help the birthday kid blow out the candles.

So now we let the birthday child blow out the candles on the main cake, and we provide a candle-lit cupcake for all the other little ones to blow out. Then at the end everyone blows out their candles. And no one complains that they didn't get to blow them out.

For my daughter's 1st birthday we did a "fish" theme because she was fascinated by fish at the time.

We had a under-the-sea decorated cake, I cut out fish shapes out of bright paper, pulled up the window shades and taped the fish onto the windows (so the windows looked like fishtanks), and hung green and blue streamers all over the "party" room. But the coolest thing we did was a party game... I found a big piece of plywood (left over at a home construction site) and I painted a under the sea scene on it. Then we cut a big hole in the middle of the wooden sea scene - right where a fish's face would be. Party guests took turns sticking their head in the hole and making silly fish faces, and we took everyone's picture w/ a Polaroid camera so they had an instant party favor! It was super cute for kids and adults!

Make a game out of "Baby's firsts" moments.

The CD idea is a classic, I did it for my son's 6th birthday, and I used a CD-label program to personalize the labels. We used Disney dance songs and parents are still telling me how their kids keep listening to it over and over again

I love the ideas. I am going to do a cd with some pix of her from the year past including video. I make one short video for burning as a keepsake. It will play on our video player while the party is going on. Also, I was thinking a kid and adult friendly remembering the firsts.

I love all y'all ideas, my son birthday is this friday coming and i didn't have a clue what to do, thanks to you guys now i do

Where were you 6 years ago? My son turned one and at the time hadn't been to many - any? - 1 year old birthday parties. Back then the internet was just gearing up and wasn't all that helpful. These are great ideas!

Also, just went to a 2 year old's birthday bash and the theme was candy which was a great excuse to have a very colorful party. The mom went all out: shaped shaped cellophane into candy decorations, "lollipops" made from cellophane around cardboard popped from the ground, bright colorful table clothes on the table, orange netting wrapped around each chair, tons of candy favors, hand made chocolate dipped strawberries, pretzels, hand made lollipops, candy necklances for kids and grown ups. The pinata bag had a coloring book in it so I thought that was the favor bag too... but no when I left my daughter was handed a green square cardboard box with of course candy inside plus a soft little doll.

This is more then I would personally ever do as a hostess but we sure enjoyed being guests!

My grandson will be here (Texas) from Florida for his 1st birthday. We live at the lake and thought it would be fun to use a boat theme. No little children will be here just adults and just a few of them but would like to do something fun for my daughter to have pictures of my grandsons 1st birthday. Ideas appreciated. Jerri