Wyatt’s first birthday was something I started thinking about a few months in advance, I was super excited about it and am crazy about party planning. I love a good theme for a birthday party, and even though this was a kid’s party, I still wanted it to be tasteful. My go-to first move when party planning is Pinterest. As soon as I came across the “Party Animal” theme, I knew it was the one…plus Wyatt’s love of animals didn’t hurt. The party was a success, we ended up having 24 adults and 6 babies in our little apartment. It was so fun to feel all the love for our sweet boy, and he is quite the party animal so he had the best time entertaining his guests!
Wall Decor
I repurposed three felt animal heads that were in Wyatt’s nursery for some of the wall decor, and used three large IKEA frames for signage. I attached them all to the wall with these command hooks so I didn’t put holes in the wall where I didn’t want any.
[One tip for making large prints is to create what you want in Word or Photoshop and then upload it to Staples.com and get an “engineering print” for only a few bucks…that’s how I made Wyatt’s One Year Stats print.]
For the large frame with pictures, I printed out a picture from the day Wyatt was born and then the 11 pictures from each month after, cropped them all into squares, arranged them 3 x 4 into the frame and added small 0-12 tags.
The balloon arch was actually a lot easier than it looks: Blow up about 65 white balloons to a few different sizes. Then, thread a needle with fishing line and thread all the balloons onto the line. Put the needle through the knot of each balloon and alternate balloon sizes, not in any particular order, just keep it mixed. Next, put these hooks on the wall in the layout you want your arch to go, and hook the balloon line onto the hooks. For some of the hooks you might have to make an additional loop of fishing line to loop onto the arch and the hook so it can reach. And voila, you have a balloon arch! I made this the night before and it lasted more than a few days!
Tablescape
The small animals I used around the food table, bar and the minis on the cake are all by Schleich. They’re super realistic + I gave them to Wyatt as toys after the party, so they didn’t go to waste as just decor. I made their tiny hats using this tutorial and used these pom poms to top them off! The packages I folded using these templates, I just cut the templates out and traced them onto swatches of patterns that I printed out that went with our color scheme.
I used preserved boxwoods to add dimension, texture and color to my tables. I LOVE boxwoods currently and have them all over my apartment as our usual decor. I used these as well as some other sizes by the same company.
I originally had ordered white linen tablecloths to cover our table and bar area, but ended up not liking how they looked with the decor- so I used our two of our tannin colored Gathre Mats to cover the table and bar for a more cohesive look. They also wipe clean so they were perfect tablecloths!
For some of the signs I used these free downloads for the animal graphics. And for the cake topper I made this print and cut it out, then taped it to a skewer. This is the felt letter board I used to write, “Welcome Party Animals.”
I mostly used serving dishes that I had, the cupcakes were on this three tier serving tray, the cake was on this cake plate, and I used these mini crates to put under some of the plates to create height. We used small white cocktail napkins and these disposable palm frond plates. We used wine glasses we had, and added these glass milk bottles for the specialty drink for a little something extra. I decorated these straws with some “Wyatt Turns One” straw flags, this is my template.
Highchair Decor
We have this highchair and used this banner on the front.
For the balloon tassels I used this tutorial and I used these 36″ white balloons. I also had a few of these huge white balloons scattered elsewhere in the apartment…they’re awesome!
Menu
For the food I wanted a lot of things that I could prep in advance so the morning of the party I wasn’t going insane, and I wanted finger foods since there was really no where for people to sit and eat off of a plate with a fork and knife. So again, I took to Pinterest and made myself a menu of a bunch of mini versions of foods, a lot of things ended up on these skewers for serving ease. (They’re pretty long, but super easy to cut down to different lengths!)
Veggies
Mini Cups with Veggies in Ranch Dressing (carrots sticks, cucumber, yellow + red peppers in these cups)
Meat
Mango Jalapeño Chicken Meatballs on a dollop of Mango Salsa
Chicken and Waffle Skewers drizzled with Maple Syrup (I didn’t add the top waffle)
Carbs (idk that’s what I called this category)
Pizza Slices
Dessert
Donut Hole Towers (I used two of this size cone)
Mini Cake (6″ three layer vanilla, and my attempt at a “naked” cake)
Cupcakes: Chocolate and Vanilla (baked in these baking cups and frosted with this large decorating tip)
Drinks
For drinks I had a variety of beer, wine, champagne, ‘Greyhounds’ as the specialty drink in the dispenser, and non-alcoholic beverages like sparkling water, iced tea, and bottled water.
Entertainment
I didn’t really feel the need to provide any formal entertainment, we threw on college football and some music. Luckily the layout of our place made it so it wasn’t super cramped, and the babies had their own play space. I put some of Wyatt’s toys out and got this inflatable kiddie pool and filled it with these balls for a diy ball pit. One year olds are luckily mostly entertained by any toys that aren’t their own so we were good to go!
Outfit
Wyatt had to look a little extra fancy for his big day, so we went with these suspender jeans, this button down oxford bodysuit, this bowtie, and these moccasins. He was quite the dapper little gentleman! Tim and I also got him this metal race car for his birthday, also available in pink!
Happy 1st Birthday, baby boy, you are SO loved!
Paige
October 28, 2019This is wonderful! I am going to try and replicate for my sons 1ST Birthday. Thanks for the beautiful inspo.