Becoming a mom has made me realize how much I love to party plan. I never really had the opportunity before having my daughter, but it’s seriously a blast crafting all of the party details and decorations. I was so stoked to plan Olivia’s 1st birthday! I’m sure I spent countless hours of browsing the internet for party themes, but one in particular kept sticking out to me. When I was itty bitty, my mother sang “You Are My Sunshine” to me each night before bed, as I’m sure most moms did. Since Olivia has come into this world, I’ve carried on the tradition of singing it to her every night. While she now sings along with me in her sweet toddler voice, I belted out the lyrics as loud as I could at her age, haha… my poor mom. This song has always held a special place in my heart and I just knew it would be the perfect theme!
Her photoshoot was so much fun. And a little (or a lot) messy, but that’s the best part, right? It was actually the first time Livi had ever tasted anything sweeter than breast milk and apples. She wasn’t a huge fan of it at first, she ended up destroying more than she ate, haha. I just adore the shot of the icing squished between those cutie tiny baby fingers!
Here’s how it all came together!
P A R T Y D E T A I L S:
For our entry table, I framed Olivia’s party invitation, an 8×10 from her photoshoot draped in pretty pearls, and a cute “sunshine” print I found on Pinterest.
I decided to do cookies as our party favors for our guests that I ordered from a local bakery. They were DELISH. For the tags, I typed and printed out “Thank you for brightening my day!” and punched them with a 2″ circle paper punch, gluing them over a 3″ sun. Use a small hole punch for the ribbon and tie them around your cookie bag. I think I may have snipped the tops off because the bags were a bit long. We’ve done “cookie favors” for all of Livi’s birthday parties so far. Simple and super tasty party treats!
I made the layered garland using a Cricut that a family member let me play with. I love it so much, I think it turned out adorable. I hot-glued the shapes double-sided to some illusion cord that I had on hand and then hung them with mini Command hooks. It was somewhat time consuming, but definitely worth the effort.
Dressing up the highchair for your little one’s big day is such a fun idea. For ours, I simply cut out large triangles from cardstock, gluing smaller quatrefoil triangles over them. I printed and cut out the letters as a stencil and glued those as well. With the same idea as the cookie tags in mind, a few sun details gave this mini banner that extra cuteness! If you’re liking the fabric bunting, click H E R E for a full tutorial on how I made it. They’re so easily customizable for any occasion and don’t require a lot of skill on the sewing machine. Seriously, anyone can do it — check it out! The large canvas with lyrics was something I recreated from an Etsy print that I had to have, only it was much too small for the space I wanted to fill. So, I downloaded the same fonts and enlarged the dimensions with Photoshop to fit my 30×30 canvas. I sent it down to a graphics store nearby and purchased a stencil of the full design. The hardest part of this project was painting 3 or 4 coats of yellow on this bad boy! I’m so happy with it though, we’ve had it hanging in Olivia’s bedroom every since.
T R E A T S & E A T S:
Olivia’s birthday is at the beginning of April, so Easter is usually right around the same time. With that in mind, I wanted some fresh and spring-like flavors for our party menu. Each dish really complimented each other; everything was so yummy! The morning of the party, I was pretty overwhelmed with how much food prep still needed to be done. My lack of estimating how much time I had left to finish, definitely got the best of me. Without the help of my family and friends, I would’ve been running around the kitchen in a frenzy trying to get it all done. I was grateful to have a some extra hands to help me out! Here’s what our menu consisted of:
- Sunshine Chicken Salad Sandwiches cut in sun shapes
- Truffled Deviled Eggs (Minus the “truffling” because we ran out of time. It happens!)
- Mini Fruit Pizza with Blueberries, Kiwi, and Strawberries
- Vanilla and Chocolate Cupcakes with White Buttercream Frosting
- Strawberry Vanilla Cake Pops
- Banana Pineapple Punch
For some easy and darling cupcake toppers, cut small strips of fabric and tie it around one end of a toothpick. I’m totally digging the vintage look!
For Livi’s cake, I used organic vanilla icing mix and strawberry cake mix. I colored the frosting to my liking and used a No. 21 Wilton star tip for decorating. I would say, she enjoyed this cake better than the first one! The before, and aftermath. How sweet is that frosting-covered baby face??
I enjoyed planning this party so much and I’m thrilled to share some ideas with you all. The soft pinks and yellows were the perfect combination of pure sweetness. Out of her 3 birthday parties, this is still my absolute favorite theme. I’m sure it has a lot to do with it being her first birthday, but some very special memories were made that day. We sure are blessed with our little angel!
