|not too sure about the cake|
Can you guys believe William is one?! We hardly can. This past year flew by! We had so many great adventures with William and so many great memories of his first year. We can’t wait to see what this year brings!
Planning for William’s First Birthday party was a blast. At first we weren’t sure if we would have a theme or just go with everything being baby blue. When William was born, Katherine gave him a gold giraffe wearing a party hat. When we spotted it sitting on the bookshelves in the nursery, it became our party inspiration and our theme; “Calling all party animals!”
Invitations:
- Minted is one of our favorite online stores to find paper goods. We used Minted when we sent out William’s birth announcement last year and we loved how they turned out! As soon as I saw these “party animal” invitations I knew that was the direction we were going to go! He absolutely loves his giant stuffed giraffe “Ned” and he is Mr. Social, so party animals sounded like the perfect party for William. We customized a few options on the invitation: 1) Changed the banner to say – Calling all Party Animals. 2) Changed the color of the font to blue. 3) Chose personalized stamps (in blue) and 4) had the cutest return address tags added to the suite.
- One of my absolute favorite parts? The invitations came printed with addresses, so all I had to do was stuff the envelopes and get them in the mail. Perfect timing since I was rushing to get them out before Christmas!
|the cutest party animal invitations from minted|
|ned the giraffe greeting guests|
|proud parents|
Food:
The party was from 2-4 pm because William is usually awake then! Because of the time, we decided to serve small bites of food and dessert instead of a full lunch.
- Grilled cheese: We picked these up from Sonic and kept them in the oven warming throughout the party. They were a huge hit and William’s favorite food right now
- Fruit Skewers: We stacked strawberries, cantaloupe and grapes on mini toothpicks w/party hats.
- Cupcakes: My sister-in-law made funfetti cupcakes that were delicious. I found the idea for the mini gold party animals on Pinterest and decided to try it for William’s birthday. It was so easy to do and was the perfect touch for the food table!
- Party Animal Cookies: One of Stia’s friends from college owns Sift Bake Shoppe. We reached out to her about doing the party animal cookies and we just love how they turned out! They were almost too cute to eat 😉
- Smash Cake: We ordered a 6-inch vanilla cake at Whole Foods. You guys– it was incredible! One of the better cakes we have had from a bakery.
|the food table|
|cutest cookies from sift bake shoppe|
|diy gold party animals and funfetti cupcakes|
|the smash cake|
Drinks:
In our opinion, you can’t have a party without beer or champagne, so that’s what we did. We served everything in customized “William is ONE!” cups with coordinating straws to go along.
- Champagne: Everyone likes to celebrate with champagne! We also had the option of peach nectar for bellinis and orange juice for mimosas
- Beer: Caleb chose an assortment of beer, that we’re sure all the men appreciated 😉
- Pellegrino: For any nondrinkers or moms-to-be, we served Pellegrino with a slice of lime.
|custom cups for william’s first birthday|
Decor:
The decor was meant to be very festive – considering we were having a “party animal” birthday party!
- Tassel garlands, tassel balloons, cake topper and William and Ned’s (William’s giraffe) party hats: Carousel Lane is an Etsy shop that we found while planning his party. All the party decor is SO cute and most everything is customizable based on whatever colors you choose. Everything was delivered very quickly and was so easy to put together. Disclaimer: Be careful once you have the 36-inch balloons filled with helium – one of ours popped when we were taking it out of the car, so we had to improvise!
- Cups/Napkins: We used a local party store to make custom cups and napkins.
- Party Hats: We found these party hats at Target for guests to put on when they walked in the door.
|celebrating the birthday boy||
|loving his first taste of sugar|highchair|
|umm, yum!|
|photo op!|
Party Favors:
- Popcorn boxes: We filled popcorn boxes with popcorn from a local popcorn shop. The front of the box had the same “William is ONE!” logo on it and because they were party favors we wrapped them in clear bags with baby blue twine.
|popcorn for a party favor|
What we wore:
- You all know that I love dressing William in traditional clothes, so he wore this adorable bubble with knee socks and saddle shoes. When it was time for him to dive into the cake, he wore this monogrammed bib!
- The three of us girls decided we needed to be in something cute, but comfortable and something that would make it easy to chase after William (he is obsessed with climbing the stairs!).We all wore jeans and flats and I wore this white lace top I got for Christmas, Katherine chose this sleeveless turtleneck sweater and Jean wore this navy ruffled shirt (that’s currently on sale for under $30!).
|william and his girls :)|
|four generations|
|the whole b&h family|
|the birthday boy cruising in his custom radio flyer|
One of the big hits at the party was William’s custom Radio Flyer wagon. The parents all took turns pulling the little ones through the house. William was a great host and didn’t mind sharing a bit 🙂 The party was so much fun! All of our family and closest friends came out to celebrate William and we all felt very loved and very blessed.
Cheers,
Stia, Jean & Katherine