How To: Giving Baby a 1st Birthday Party! — Chocolate Mama Loves VanillaChocolate Mama Loves Vanilla

Theme-

This is the FUN Part! This is where your imagination can soar to your hearts desire! Coming up with a theme is what puts everything else into perspective. If you have a popular theme in mind such as a Luau, Superhero’s, Fairy Tales, and so much more. You’ll have so many decoration options accessible for being bought at the store. If you get more creative with themes, then your also going to have to get creative in making your own decorations to get your theme across.

Aidan’s 1st Birthday Safari/Wildlife Theme: Animal Print Balloons (Dollar store), Tree Logs (backyard), Safari Hats, Safari Binoculars, Safari Jeep Photo Prop, Animal Face Masks, Safari Game, Table decorations (Dollar Store), Candy (Dollar Store), Paper Cups and Plates.

Other (Crayons for Animal Coloring pages, Animal Face Sticker set, Animal print paper bags as gift bags, Food Label's made from paper name cards)

12 Month Growth Reveal!

Just like snapping pictures of your pregnant belly for 9 months. I’ve seen so many different Idea’s for taking photo's of your baby’s growth throughout the year, every month for 12 months. Get your creative juices going and snap pictures of your adorable bundle of joy!

No matter what you choose, every baby is different. It’s so cute to see how babies develop over a month to month time frame from birth to 1 year. My biggest observations that changed by the 12th month is baby’s size and HAIR! Just love it!

Hope you enjoy my Photo/Video Version of the 12 Month Growth Reveal! It all goes with the Safari/Jungle theme!

Food-

This can end up being the stressful part if you are the one making the food for your party. Just like other types of parties such as Christmas parties or Super Bowl parties, there tends to be food trends as well. For example, you can usually find chips and dip, burgers, or chili at a super bowl party. Keep this in mind for your theme, what foods would make your theme stick out?

Lion's Head Hummus

Garlic Hummus (Recipe Coming Soon!)

Dirt Cups

Chocolate Pudding, Crumbled Oreo's, and a Gummy Worm!

Monkey Pudding

Banana Pudding (Recipe will be Posted Soon!)

For Aidans Safari Theme I made Dirt cups (chocolate pudding, crumbled oreos, & gummy worms) to resemble dirt and worms, Banana Pudding (dolloped with fresh whipped cream!) for the monkeys that will be attending :-), Garlic Hummus with Bell Peppers, Pretzels and Chips served on the side for the Lion’s Head (Food Creativity Pictured Below!).

For the main meal I made sliders and planned to arranged them in the shape of a snake! I ran behind on time and didn’t get the burgers out to the guest to arrange them, but if I had just a little more time! (oh, well! 1st birthday are insane to plan! Hang in there!) The options are fun. If you want less stress, you can always get catering or even order a bunch of pizzas!

Cake-

This is the main thing everyone will be expecting. You can forget everything else, but everyone will be looking for the Cake! This is where you can personalize till it meets all your expectations. I made a Marble Cake (Chocolate and Vanilla) with Candy Coated Chocolate Frosting and called it Zebra Cake! To add more creativity, toy animals were placed around the cake. Just remember to take a picture before it gets eaten! And don’t forget candles are a must for birthdays! Especially the very first! All you need is 1 anyways! :-D

Party Favors-

Some people don’t do party favors, so this is completely optional! But if you decide to have them you can choose to have party favors for Adults and Children, or you could cater to the children only! You can have toys in the goodie bag or you can have candy and other edibles in the goodie bag.

I choose to have toys in the goodie bag. It’s bad enough to watch your kids sugar intake on halloween, I didn’t want to send parents home with more sugar problems!

Some non-edible party favor ideas include: Stamps, Slinky's, Bubbles, Animal Tattoes, Stickers, Paddles, Whistles, and Kaleidoscopes (not pictured). Instead of candy directly in the bag, I had candy decorating the table and it’s up to the parents to decide if they want their children to take it home (pictures are mints wrapped in animal print wrappers)

I also choose to create a fake SWAMP for the kids to play with made of JELLO! Throw some water and bugs (Dollar Store Bugs!) in a container and you've got a very fun, creepy, ooey, gooey, texture for kids to play in for some time! I got the kid friendly sensory idea from No Time For Flash Cards and the children LOVED it at my party. So I guess everyone should try this with kids at some point in life! :-D

Drinks-

Depending on your crowd, meaning if you have mostly party raging friends coming over who don’t get to party anymore because of the kids (and this is the only time they are going to get out of the house and interact with other adult humans) Bring on the Alcohol! Make it pretty and make sure to be very very very clear on the kid drinks versus the adult beverages!

Gift Opening-

Not much to say about this part besides: AWESOME! Gifts are always awesome to receive. They are very much appreciated as well! You can choose to have a time frame where all the gifts are opened at the same time, or if your party is a coming and going type of deal, you can open them at different times. Particularly if a guest is about to leave you can open them up in front of everyone or separately. Whatever you heart desires, the outcome is the same when being showered with gifts and love!

Epic 1st Birthday Fails-

Remember, It’s OKAY if everything doesn’t go according to plan! If it wasn't meant to be, then it wasn’t meant to be! It’s your little one’s 1st Birthday! Thats whats important, and everything you attempted to do was with your whole heart and you can’t be mad when you want this very day to be special!

Take all the fails as a lesson for Birthday Number 2, Or baby #2 (3, 4, 5 and however many more! Even godchildren, nieces or nephews that you choose to help throw one for!)

Below I listed my Fails because I’m not perfect or ashamed and you shouldn’t be either! We are just Humans :-)

Fail #1- Party DID not START on time! (Due to still cooking! I cooked EVERYTHING, lesson #1!)
Fail #2- I put my 1st guest to arrive to work :-( They helped me get the food out that was running behind and last minute decorating!
Fail #3- I Forgot to add extra water to Lemonade! So it was very strong! Agh, Sorry Folks for the sugar rush!
Fail #4 - I didn’t get to arrange my burger slider in the shape of a snake as I planned because food ran behind while guest were already there
Fail #5- I had to have my Mother and Aunt pass out the walk-in gifts and walk-out goodie bags because I could not :-(
Fail #6- I didn’t get to show the special 12 month video of Aidan because there wasn’t enough time!
Fail #7- This is the worst! Because everything ran behind, I didn’t get any pictures of the Final Set-Up of everything before guest arrived! I could cry about this but I kept it together! lol Keep it together People! LOL

P.s. Listing these fail’s was almost as REFRESHING as a confessional… almost! :-D

I do not take credit for any of the animal pictures used in my video. Below I have linked back to the photo's original location for Proper Credit: