As I mentioned in my post about Cooper's 1 year pictures, we decided on a baseball theme for his first birthday party. We celebrated this weekend with family (and a couple of friends) and had a great afternoon! I found most of my ideas on Pinterest and was even able to find free printables for almost everything, so I'll share links throughout. Here's a glimpse of Cooper's first birthday party! Just a warning, it ended up being a pretty long post since I included most of the details.
Decorations and Printables
I looked at several different invitation ideas and took the elements I liked and created our own invitation. I made my invitations (and most things I designed) in Silhouette Studio, mainly because it's one of the only softwares we have on our computer and I've found it to be pretty easy to use.
This Cooper's Dugout sign is from the wall in his room!
I made this ONE banner to put on his high chair, but it was pretty heavy, so I moved it to hang above the table in our entryway. On the entryway table we had a collage of Cooper's 1 year old pictures along with the 2 "activities" for his party
We had printed some pages where people could write their favorite memory of the year and then I scanned them in to put them in his baby book. We also did a predictions game looking ahead to the year Cooper turns 18. We asked guests to predict things like his height, his first job, his favorite subject, his college choice, and whether or not he could grow a mustache or would have gray hairs. I created and printed the above sign and put it in a cheap 4x6 frame (the kind that you can get 2 for less than $1 at Walmart) and put it on the table with the papers to fill out.
I made this chalkboard print about Cooper at age 1. Once again, I gathered several examples that I liked and made my own. I followed the tutorial and tips from this blog post and downloaded a free trial of photoshop for the week to create it. I had it printed at Fedex and framed it. We had it out on one of the food tables and I plan to hang it in Cooper's room now that the party is over.
I downloaded and printed this Concessions Banner from Aspenjay and hung it above our island where we put the food.
I also created a banner of Cooper's monthly pictures and hung it up across our cabinets. I used some baseball cupcake toppers I downloaded to write out "Cooper's Rookie Year" and hung it in the middle. I also printed this baseball Happy Birthday Banner and hung it over our TV. Several of the printables I used were from this link, I used the baseball cupcake toppers, the food labels, and the bottle wrappers to go on the favors for the kids.
Food
We decided to do mostly "ballpark food" for lunch. I found some slider buns and thought they were so cute, so we did sliding into first sliders-- again I designed and printed this page and framed it in my other cheap 4x6 frame to put on the food table. We had pulled pork and turkey burger sliders as well as hot dogs.
We also had popcorn, cracker jacks, cheese, crackers, and fruit, and chips.
And for dessert I made Cooper another baseball smash cake and some cupcakes for the guests. We also had baseball helmet sundaes like we love to get at the ballpark. I ordered the Cubs logo since the colors matched our theme and they had a C for Cooper. I prescooped the ice cream and froze it in batches in cupcake wrappers in a muffin tin and it helped a lot for serving the ice cream quickly! We also had several toppings for the sundaes.
Shirts
In addition to Cooper's shirt that I made and he wore for his 1 year old pictures, I also made David and I shirts for the party. They say "Team Cooper" on the front and then the back we each have our age and "name" (Daddy, Mommy, and Rookie of the Year)
Thanks to my hubby for agreeing to wear the matching shirts!
Fun
We didn't plan a whole lot to do other than eat, fill out the few pages, and hang out. We spent some time opening all of the generous gifts. Cooper actually had very little interest in staying near us while we opened gifts, but we did grab a picture of him checking out one of his cards.
We sang Happy Birthday and ate cake.
He loved the icing!
He enjoyed seeing his friend Leon
And his cousins are always a big hit!
After the party we said goodbye to all of our family, Cooper took a nap, and David and I cleaned up. When Cooper got up he had fun exploring all of his new toys. We've since then organized them a little better to rotate them out, but he got so much good stuff! We are so thankful to our family who celebrated with us!
And that's a wrap on Cooper's first birthday. I'll post one more about some details of his baby book and then we'll move on to year two with our sweet boy!
No comments:
Post a Comment