Brooke’s 1st Birthday: Recap

I will warn you now - this post is going to be EXTREMELY long, and loaded with pics. I apologize in advance to my readers who don't care about one-year-old Birthday Parties...! So as you guys know, I love this type of stuff !! I was pretty pumped to put together decorations for my little peanut's 1st Birthday party. We tried to keep it relatively small, as our house is only so big - and we both have large families. It turned out that we had amazing weather - 80 degrees & sunny in late April - awesome! Here are some pics & info on a bunch of the DIY decorations I made. I will do my best to give resources & explanations for each item, but if you have any specific questions just let me know. Thanks!

As you can probably gather from the photos, the theme for her party was owls. I love owls I wanted bright, fun colors - so I decided to use the Little Girl & Summer Days collection from Echo Park as my color inspiration. This is where my HUGE tip comes in: if you go to Jessica Sprague's site, you can purchase Echo Park digital kits. These kits include their papers, embellishments, etc. - even better is on Wednesdays, they have Echo Park $1 deals - where they offer their digital kits for only $1 each! TOTAL SCORE! I ended up grabbing these kits on sale as I saw them, so I already had them on my computer ready to be used. This came in especially handy when it was time to put together the invitations: (I used Photoshop for this - and I've blurred out personal info)

The best part about these digital kits was using the digital papers on the goodies for the party. I loved the colors in these collections, but I didn't want to have to go & buy all that scrapbook paper, only to use it & throw it away! Instead, I printed out a bunch of designer paper from the digital kits. I printed it on regular old computer paper, and just backed it with white cardstock when I needed to.

Here are some party hats getting ready for assembly. I started by using this digital cut file with my Silhouette. I then glued some printed designer paper onto some regular white cardstock to make them nice & sturdy.

I printed out some super cute owls and created little embellishments from them using punches. I added them to my hats and tied some elastic through some holes & they were all set. Cheap, easy & quick party hats!

The birthday girl of course had her own special hat (made with the real designer paper). I picked up some pom poms at Hobby Lobby and used my hot glue gun to add them around the rim of the hat. I also created my own pom (more on that below) for the top of the hat & glued it on using the hot glue gun. Lastly, I cut out the number 1 using my Silhouette and adhered with some foam adhesive. I really love how it turned out - it looked SUPER cute on her!

I made some of these large owl decorations using my Cricut and my Silhouette. I have the Silhouette SD, which does not cut 12"x12" paper. So I pulled out my Cricut and cut out the largest scallops that I could (using 12"x12" paper & the "fit to page" option). I believe these ended up being roughly 11.5" or so. I then cut out circles to layer inside. The owls were all cut from this cut file that I found in the Silhouette online store. These guys were SUPER fun to make - and you seriously cannot beat the price of $0.99 for 4 owls - one of the many reasons I love my Silhouette over my Cricut!

I hung them up in various spots throughout the house...

(paper lanterns from Hobby Lobby. Photo books are ones that I recently created on Shutterfly and put them out for viewing.)

I made the pom pom garlands using yarn that I grabbed at my local craft store. I picked the colors that I thought matched best, and just created them while watching TV a little each night. They don't take too long to make, and I think they are so fun. They will be great to re-use in her playroom now that the party is over. I also used them as a backdrop in her cake smash photoshoot.

We had a ton of balloons - which the kids LOVED. I bought one of those do-it-yourself tanks ("Balloon Time" I think they are called?). Grandpa (my Dad) sat there all morning blowing up balloons - he did a great job. It was so fun to have all that extra color. Each kid got to take a few balloons home with them - so they were pretty happy with that!

I also made a few banners. Banners & garlands seemed to be another them to this party...!

This was a small banner to go in the front of her high chair, I adhered it to the tray using glue dots:

This next banner says "Brooke is One" - also made using my Silhouette (sorry for the funky photo - I had to use my fish eye lens to fit this banner into one pic, so it sort of looks funny!).

Another banner - this one says "Happy Birthday" - I hung this above the table with the food & goodie bags. I made the large tissue paper poms by following this tutorial - they were surprisingly easy to do!

One of my favorite projects was this garland depicting her first 12 months. I totally grabbed this idea from Pinterest.

I used some American Crafts Thickers for the numbers. I simply punched out some cardstock with a circle punch, and adhered the Thickers. I then used a glue dot to stick the circles to the clothespins.

I had a whole bunch of photos printed out & I wanted to try and display as many as I could. I decided to use the mantle above our wood stove to display photos of Brooke from those early days. I just used more of those wooden clothespins and some pom pom yarn.

Also, those owls that you see? They were a TOTAL score that I found at my local Christmas Tree Shop (a store local to New England). They were like $4 each. I stumbled upon them a few weeks before her party & couldn't believe it. They were the SAME colors that I was using for her party, and super cute! I plan on re-purposing these in her nursery or playroom.

This last one is not a banner or garland, but just another display of some of my favorite photos from the past year. I had this hung up above her high chair. This photo hanger is actually from IKEA. I got it there a few years ago, so I have no idea they still sell them.

The goodie bags were a fun project. I grabbed some colored bags at Hobby Lobby (green for the boys, purple for the girls) and made them into owls. Again, used my Silhouette to do some die cutting for this.

Inside each bag was a variety of things: bubbles (with an added owl on top!), sidewalk chalk, stickers, and some coloring pages with crayons.

These coloring pages were actually quite neat. I found this website and used it to print out a variety of fun party-themed coloring pages. I cut them down to 4.25"x5.5" and they fit nicely into a clear plastic bag that I use for my greeting cards. I grabbed some crayons at the Dollar store and added a few to each package.  I also printed out full 8.5"x11" sheets of these coloring pages and put them out in the playroom for the kids to color while they were at the party. However the weather ended up being SO nice that no one even went upstairs to the playroom - they were all outside!

For food, we kept it simple & went with munchies, pizza and salad. I put on my baking hat (well, I attempted)...to make the cupcakes & Brooke's cake. Let's just say that although I am pleased with how they turned out, I am NOT a baker. I am a paper crafter. I should probably just stick to working with paper. LOL.

I made the cupcake toppers with toothpicks and the same punched out owls from above. It was a little warm that day, so of course the eyes of the owls started sliding off a little. GAH! (everything always looks so easy on Pinterest, doesn't it?)

Brooke had her own cake to smash - because let's face it - who wants to eat cake after the kid smushes their yucky hands into it?

Even the little ones had their own snacks at this party. It was Toddler heaven...

I used more of that digital scrapbooking paper that I had printed to wrap around these water bottles. My Mom was teasing for me this level of detail But it took 2 minutes to do, and I had PLENTY of the paper to use - so I figured why not!

SO - there you have it. All the crafty details. Holy cow, that was a lot - sorry to overload you!

And if you're wondering how it all went? Well, Brooke totally enjoyed herself! She ate, walked around, played with her cousins, got lots of cool gifts and had a grand old time. Her big gift from Mama & Dada was a Radio Flyer wagon - which she LOVED. All she wanted to do was have someone pull her around in the wagon & eat Goldfish. By the end of the day she was running around in just her onesie. She was filthy, sweaty, tired...and covered in cake, frosting, water, dirt and goldfish. She didn't nap - but was totally ripping it up and having a great time.

I'd say it was a total success and a great way to say HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY to my sweet little girl!