Decorate: First Birthday Party

There are those who are organized enough to plan months in advance for their baby's first birthday. I am not one of them. It might be that it I was in denial that a whole year had come and gone, but I'm pretty sure I was also dragging my feet at the thought of coming up with decorations, invites, favors... Last Halloween I had the graces of Designing Mom Shinmin who kicked my butt into gear to forgo a store bought Halloween costume and make one instead. Did I burn all my knuckles with a glue gun to make that thing? I sure did. But Shinmin was right...I look back and I'm glad I did it. And I knew I would want to do the same for his first birthday as well, just with better efficiency and ease!

To cut out cleaning our place, we decided to hold it at Sprout, a wonderful natural and organic children's boutique in the city where I go to ogle onesies. They have an intimate courtyard outside for the adults and a children's playroom inside. We couldn't have asked for a sunnier day to celebrate!

The pre-requisite was that everything had to be made with scissors, glue or tape and materials needed to be found at home or for cheap at the fabric store. A wall of crowns and wands (will post that up soon!), macaroon tower, tissue poms and a bedsheet banner were some of the "makes" for the party.

The invites were really easy to make. I used a photo taken by Beth Hurley and backed them with different papers I had stashed in my desk drawer.

This pale seafoam sheet served as the color theme for the party. I used old fabrics and papers to cut out the letters. I made the tissue poms from a Martha Stewart tutorial.

Ahhh...the half naked macaroon tower! Never eyeball how many macaroons fit around a cone because I sorely miscalculated by at least half! Still, the guests loved sampling all of the yummy flavors like earl grey, rose, pistachio and madasgascar from Paulette. If you want to make your own, just purchase a styrofoam cone and glue or pin wax paper around it. I was going to use frosting to adhere them but read online that toothpicks were a better choice. The photo is cut off, but I glued glitter letters and made a green polka dotted pennant to stick onto the tower.
Other touches at the party that were also really easy to make: bubbles wrapped in the matching paper and fabrics, tin noisemakers that had cute retro patterns on them and little goodie bags with the same glitter letters glued to them.