~The Little Miss and her First Birthday~

The Invitation...

Can you pick the theme?! I loved the idea of using polka dots and then carried the polka dot (circular) theme through to the invitations, decor and food! I had so much fun planning this party. The colours I used were pink and white.....right down to the The Little Miss' polka dot birthday dress.

Party Decor... a year in clothes!

Such a sweet idea, borrowed from Mell from Ella's first birthday.

String, pegs and some baby clothes, super easy and super cute!!

Something special to put into a time capsule...

Have done this for both of my kids now and it's something special that you can bring out at a birthday later down the track, like an 18th or 21st. It doesn't have to be anything detailed or say specific things but a good tip , if you plan to use this idea, is to have near the cards a small list of Topic Starters. They may include things like, "My hopes and dreams for you are...", "I love you because..", whatever you want really. oh and pens that work :)

Some simple but OH SO BEAUTIFUL deco's!

I think they may just be my favourite feature for this party. Just love the colours, the softness and prettiness of the pom poms,coupled with some paper lanterns...perfect for the Little Miss in your life. Another combo of colours that would be oh so sweet is pastel yellow, white and maybe even a touch of pink. Delicious!

I will add a tutorial on the paper pom pom's at a later date, they are easy to make if you have a bit of time and enjoy getting crafty!

THE PARTY TABLE 

(before food)

Some yummy treats

More yummy treats. Love the tea cup biscuits- so cute!

~ Yummy food ~

How easy are circles to incorporate into food?! And lots of fun to plan!

Some bubble fun....more round things!! Yes I think about these things! hehe.

Perfect for the rainy backdrop we had that day to see glorious bubbles floating around. Adults and kids alike had an absolute ball!

The polka dot birthday cake! Not my best but the birthday girl was happy and that's the main thing!!

Bug Party

This was my first go at a themed birthday party - being for my gorgeous little man's first ever birthday! To be honest there was heaps more I thought of -than I ended up doing , simply because I was trying to keep it basic since he would not really remember much of it at all! And...being a first time mum I was just concerned about being able to do a kids party at all....and getting that cake that would be forever immortilised in photo's, spot on!!

I wanted this birthday to record Caleb's family and closest friends thoughts on him then and what he might get up to in the future....so I created some cards with bug stickers on them (sooo easy!) to go into a time capsule.

cards for time capsule

I have put them in a small, flat silver tin that at some point I want  to decorate or at least SEAL properly...and keep somewhere safe until his 21st birthday! I picked card in primary colours but obviously to do something similar for another theme it'd be easy to choose colours to suit other themes or even patterned or shaped (ie cupcake or flower etc) cards. Something special to look back on anyway!

This was the cake...."Colin Caterpillar"! Took this idea from The Australian Women's Weekly, Kids' Party Cakes book. Loved making this one! Used the natural food colours to colour the icing ( as opposed to the bright more vibrant ones used in the book. I did this so my baby didn't get an excessive high from all the fake colourings etc) and coconut which is the outer layer of the muffins.  As the caterpillar gets longer, the muffins get 'shaved' down and tapered to the right size and shape. I was really happy with how this turned out....but being my first cake -did take me a while, lol :)

COLIN CATERPILLAR

I made extra cupcakes to supplement the birthday "cake"....and decorated the tops of them with various bugs. Sadly (sniff !) hubby, who was taking the pics, didn't get to taking a picture of the masterpieces before they were all gobbled up!! :( I was so proud of them.....they looked a little like these below (also from the Kids' Party Cakes book)....

 My bug cupcakes were modelled after these ones!

We managed to get one pic of one of the spider ones at least.....!

One of my lovely friends who was a guest, created a caterpillar using rolled up lavash bread (stuffed with lots of yummy chicken and salad) and used cucumber to give the little guy some feet! You can see a similar idea on theWoolworths Fresh Food kids website :) Very easy and super yummy!! Was an effective way to add to the theme without being too complex!

The invite I created....very simple and easy!

I did decorate a little with some pictures I printed off the internet....I had lady bugs, caterpillars, leaves, spiders and bee's- even though they are insects- as it wasn't strictly just a bugs theme! There is a lot more you could do for this theme but it can also be as simple as you need too :)