We celebrated Baby D's 1st birthday with a Winter ONEderland type birthday that will forever be in my memory bank as one of my favorite days ever!
I decided on the theme at the last minute. I already had another theme all planned out but this was by far so much more fun and easier to do. There are a million ideas out there and a million and one decorations at this time of year! I wanted to take advantage of the after Christmas sales to help with the decor and it worked to my advantage. I also did not want this party to have a Christmas feel, but rather more of a wintery and magical one. LA is not your typical winter place so I knew I needed to spruce up the place to give it a little more of a winter feel. The day ended up being 80 degrees and HOT! Not what I expected, but it worked.
I chose a color palette or reds, white, light blues, and silver. These were not your typical winter colors but they were fun and something I could easily work with. During my search, I surprised to find so many things with this color palette during the holidays. Target was full of stuff and I took advantage of their dollar bins, as well as their cheap ornaments.
I am huge party lover and am always going above and beyond for parties. That is my nature and what I love to do. I love to entertain and I love to decorate and plan for parties. This party was no exception! I had a blast planning every detail from decorations, to food, to gift bags. It was all very time consuming and I lost a lot of sleep over it but it was all so worth it and so, so fun.
Baby D means the world to me and I wanted him to have the best birthday party imaginable. A first birthday is a big deal and I wanted to make it just that! I want him to look back at this day and see how fun it was for everyone and how much love went into the day.
I think he will do just that! OR he will think I am nuts for having a Hot Chocolate Bar in the middle of a heat wave! Either way....
Here are a few pictures I took from the big day!
I'd like to start off by saying I am in no way a crafty person! I like to try and sometimes think I am though! This party and its crafts was a big deal for me. The fact that I pulled all this off is bananas.
I had seen balloon wreaths here and there on blogs and loved the idea. I figured I could try to make it and it could be the wreath on the door to greet people. I found a tutorial for this balloon wreath here and thought it seemed easy enough. It was pretty easy and it took longer for me to get all the supplies than it did to make it! LA a traffic blows!
I started with the basic idea of the centerpiece being something that had a winter feel but not a Christmas tree. The branches for the centerpiece were found at the LA Flower Market. I spray painted them white and put them in a silver flower vase that I also found at the Flower Market. I printed 12 pictures of Baby D, one from each month, used a dye cut to make the scalloped edges and strung them with fishing line to hang on the tree branches. Some snowflakes and snow were added to add at the end to complete the look.
I LOVED this centerpiece so freakin' much! It was the perfect touch to the table!
When I decided on a color scheme, the search for a template for the invite, banners, and tags started on Etsy. I kind of had an idea as to what I was looking for so it made it easier to narrow down the bazillion choices! I found this amazing and super talented lady who had most of the stuff I wanted designed. She worked with me on a few things and changed around the design a little to make it just what I wanted. She was great and so easy to work with!
I printed everything on heavy card stock, cut it out and strung it all with ribbon from Michael's. This took FOREVER but well worth it.
Water bottles with custom labels were also part of her package. This seems to be a pretty popular thing at parties so I decided to do it, as well. I printed and cut the labels and taped them on with double sided tape.
Living in LA I knew we were not going to have snow. In fact I knew we probably weren't going to have cool weather. I am not complaining to all of you people who are stuck inside due to snow! I promise!
But since the weather here is not your typical winter weather, somehow I needed to come up with snow and snow flakes in our house without renting a machine! (It crossed my mind people!)
The decision to hang snowflakes from our ceiling made my hubs have a heart attack BUT we did it anyway! After all I bought a ton of snowflakes in different sizes from Target and we couldn't let them go to waste! The most expensive snowflakes were 3 dollars and they were the big metallic ones. I can use these again so it was worth the price. We strung them with fishing line and taped them to the ceiling with packing tape.
I waited till after Christmas to find some window decals on sale. I found these on Amazon and they were beautiful. Very well designed and stuck to the window nicely.
The key was to try and use what I already had if at all possible, so the shelves that hang over our sofa I used in the decor process, as well.
All the things on the shelves were from Target or things I already had.
I adapted the snowman bottle idea from Bakerella so I could use them again in the future. They are super cute and easy to make. The body of the snowman is a Frappachino bottle. Many frappachinos were consumed quickly since I decided to do this at the last minute!
I stuffed the snowman "body" with fake snow, glued on some buttons and made the scarf from felt.
The snowman head was an ornament I found at Target and used on Baby D's tree at Christmas. I just cut off the string and BAM a snowman!
The search for things with Baby D's name on it is never ending. I wanted something with his name on it on the cake table so I went straight to Etsy for the cutest baby blocks on the planet! The super talented Amy from Tiny Giraffe Shop came up with the design for these blocks. I LOVE THEM and will use them every Christmas. They are perfect! So well made and so pretty in person. The picture doesn't do them justice at all.
No party is complete without a gift bag for the kids and babies! There were a lot of the here that day, too!
I bought the felt snowman pails from the dollar bin at Target, as were the gifts inside.
The boys got a book and a toy truck or train and the girls also got a book and some barrettes.
Each kid also got a snowball water bottle that my cousin found in Texas at Wal-Mart for 25 cents! Steal!
The fun and love that was shown this day could never be put into words. Baby D had so many family members and friends in our home to help celebrate this wonderful occasion. We are truly blessed to have amazing people in our lives that love Baby D so much and were here to show that love and help celebrate this momentous day!
This will forever be one of my favorite parties I planned and worked on and it will always be one I will never forget.
The birthday boy!
And if I never see snowflakes, packing tape, and fake snow till next year I will be ok with that!
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