Breakfast and Pajamas | A First Birthday Party

I’m the first to admit I’m not a good party planner. Themes are impossible to come up with for me and then I feel like it’s just haphazardly thrown together. They always seem to turn out and everybody has a good time, but I think this is the first themed party I’ve thrown. It was for E’s first birthday and it was a “Breakfast and Pajamas” theme.

I was highly inspired by Charlotte’s first birthday party. I emailed our friends to make sure it was okay if I went with the theme and did the invitation (which I made in photoshop) very similarly. Instead of gifts (you’ll see below we have enough “stuff” we asked everybody to bring $1-2 for a donation to Make-A-Wish (in memory of our guardian angel). This seemed to go over very well. We only had one non-donation gift. I wish I would have done this sooner with other parties!

I knew I wanted to display pictures of her from her first year, so I turned to my instagram friends and found Printstagram and printed out 48 little square instagram prints. Once they arrived, I had to decide what to do with them. I looked around and found people had spelled out O-N-E with the pictures, but I didn’t have enough, so I went with the number 1. I used double sided tape and stuck it straight on the wall. Everybody checked it out and it also made a nice backdrop from some pictures. I think now I’ll take the pictures and put them in a frame or make an E with them and put them in her room.

I went very easy on the decorations. We were going to have kids at our house, they don’t really care! So, I did the birthday banner (which, I cut out by hand! Yes, I’m crazy). It received a lot of compliments. Since the theme was breakfast, I decided that the food should be the bulk of everything. With kids ages 0-9 I knew that structured games or activities were out, so we let them eat and have a free for all with the toys.

People arrived before everything was on the table, so I forgot a final picture, so you’ll have to use your imagination.

I made everything homemade and everything was delicious:

• juice boxes and mimosas for the adults. 
• make your own yogurt parfaits (which were much more of a hit then expected); diced strawberries, blueberries, granola and chocolate chips. I scooped out vanilla yogurt into little cups and placed them in a container with ice.
• homemade cinnamon rolls (using the Pioneer Woman recipe) but with cream cheese icing
• homemade egg-bacon-cheese muffin cups (I’ll have to make them again and take pictures. They were delicious and all gone.)
• pigs-in-a-blanket (the girls rolled these the night before so they just had to be cooked in the morning).
• fruit skewers (strawberries, blueberries, grapes, pineapple and cantaloupe). In hindsight, skewers weren’t the best for kids, but I was trying to keep it finger friendly.
• cupcakes. It’s a birthday. We had to have them. This was the only thing I “out-sourced”. 

Y’all, either people came hungry, or everything was really really good, because almost everything was gone. Like crumbs only left in the bowl. We went through two 9×11 pans of cinnamon rolls, too. (I managed to remember to take a picture of those).

Our birthday girl was totally unimpressed with me taking her picture while eating. (You can see the breakfast muffin cup on the front of her tray, but she sort of destroyed it).

And everybody eating and playing at the same time. Yep, it was crowded, but I think everybody enjoyed it.

E’s smash cake. Which she didn’t smash. But, I requested it with no color. Mean? Maybe. But those food colors are brutal and nasty and don’t come out, so I didn’t take the risk.

It’s important that the siblings still feel important on the big day, too (especially since they practically share their birthday). I caught N licking E’s icing right off her fingers right after this!

I had to include this one because it captured the crazy so well. 

As a party favor, a friend suggested cereal. I wanted the boxes, but we went shopping the day before the party and could only find these giant containers. We made them work. My mother-in-law tied the ribbon on them with a plastic spoon and they were our gifts to our party guests. And, it cost a $1 for each of them.

We had to stop and get a sibling picture with the girls and the birthday balloon (E went crazy over this ballon…she was squealing and yelling with delight).

 Just in case you missed it Monday, we got a family shot, too. I almost always forget to snap one, so I’m glad we had our father-in-law to stop and snap a picture for us! And yes, we did wear our jammies, too.

There was a lot of prep work the day before the party, but it made the morning much less chaotic. Thus we were able to mingle with guests and enjoy their company, too.

I’m linking up here.  Go and visit their Wordful and Wordless Wednesdays.

   

Tagged as: birthday, birthday party, breakfast and pajamas, first birthday