Party Animal 1st Birthday {first birthday ideas}

The little bambino turned one a few weeks ago, and I’m finally getting around to sharing his party animal themed birthday bash. It was originally planned to be at a park with baby swings, slides, shady trees, and covered picnic tables, but the weather had different plans for us. The Tuesday before the party there was a 100% chance of rain for party day. Sad story for our park party. After a lot of calling around, and discovering that lots of places do not do one year old parties, I finally figured out a plan B. We moved the party to a cute, local store (with a roof!) and lots of toys, called the Toybrary.

I wanted Maxwell’s first birthday to be fun and easy and all about the babies.  Happy Confetti Design whipped up all of the paper cuteness, including invites, cupcake wrappers, party hats, table confetti, and even thank you post cards! We brainstormed together and she brought the ideas to life. Do these invites remind you of anything? (Hint!)

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I really only decorated 3 little tables: Dessert table, adult food table, and a baby table set for 8. If you follow me on instagram, you’ve probably seen my monthly Maxwell pictures with the cute blocks. Well, printstagr.am just started making 3 foot long photo strips. That got me pretty excited… I have a thing for photo strips. (I’ve used printstagr.am to print instagram pictures before.) Perfection for a dessert table backdrop, and art for my walls after the party is over. I love looking at his pictures side by side. Oh who am I kidding I love looking at any picture of Max!

Side note: Printstagr.am gave me the photo strips for free, but I’ve paid for their services on multiple occasions and 100% vouch for their awesomeness!

I didn’t make any of the food! True. I ordered a few dozen cupcakes from our favorite local bakery and bought these brownie bites from good ol’ HEB! They look so fancy on the pedestal trays with cute toppers, right?! Having someone create party decorations is kind of awesome. I just printed it all out on card stock and crafted a few things here and there. For cupcake toppers, I literally just taped the toothpick to the circle. The hardest part is cutting out dozens of circles, ha!

As for the big people food table, I ordered up 2 trays of sandwiches and bought little bags of chips from the grocery store. Voila! Oh and I put together a little crudités tray. (Crudités is a fancy way to say raw veggies!) The black and white runners are from my baby shower, and I used a few cupcake toppers and colored rafia as table confetti. The yellow billy balls are from my other baby shower… up-cycling at its best, y’all!

The brightly colored plastic dinos are from the dollar section at Target. And check out the fun cupcake wrappers! Another super easy paper craft that includes a Happy Confetti Designs, a printer, card stock, scissors, and tape.

Here’s the view from the play area inside of the party room… I set the kid table with some… you’ll never guess…. kraft paper and my black and white table runners! I added a basket in the middle with pears and Happy Family food pouches… 2 of Maxwell’s favorite foods.

Each place setting included a Cheerio appetizer and a baby sized party hat.

Maxwell and his friend (the son of my sweet blog friend, Lani!) are in deep conversation. And yes, they were twins for the party!

Until they were interrupted by this crazy guy!

A cute pic of my sister (she has a blog too!), dad, and mom!

Maxwell is trying to eat, and I’m trying to steal kisses from my 363 day old baby!

And here is the cupcake eating picture! Also, sadly, the only picture I got of me, Andy, and Maxwell at the party! Oh and I’m a mean mom and really only let him hold/eat it for a few minutes! He licked a little icing, but didn’t seem to care about the cupcake too much.

And that, my friends, was Maxwell’s first birthday party! I think the party animals throughly enjoyed themselves at the Toybrary and the only thing I wish we would have done different is had a dedicated picture taker. I can never get enough pictures of my baby! What did you do for you kiddos first birthday? Big party? Celebrate at home? Did he/she get a smash cake? I’d love to hear…