Our beautiful baby boy turned 1 last week. The past year has flown by faster than I could have ever expected. It’s amazing when you look back after your child’s first year how much joy such a little person can bring in such a short amount of time. In all honesty, having him turn 1 has been very hard on this momma. I know that he will be our last child and with our daughter being so close in age, I’ve always felt like I needed to be split in two when it comes to bonding with him. I sort of want to turn back time and hold him a bit tighter and longer as a newborn just to remember it a little bit better. As they say though, time goes on and all I can do is give him all I can in this moment and pray it is enough.

To celebrate his first year I wanted to throw him a party that was just as special as he is. However, coming up with a theme proved to be quite a bit more difficult than it was for my daughter’s first birthday. Her love for Mickey and Minnie was very strong very early on so it was natural that her party be all about the Mouse. However, my son hasn’t had that strong of an attachment to any particular item. I went through all sorts of ideas in my head and on Pinterest, but nothing seemed to fit quite right. Then it hit me that what he loves most is to play with all his toys. On top of that, one of our gifts to him was a tricycle. Therefore, the theme of vintage toys was born.

For the invitations, I used my Photoshop elements software and played around with different fonts and colors before I came up with something that I loved. At first, I wanted the background to be a chevron pattern, however, I am incredibly new to the software and I’ve done a lot of chevron things with his stuff already so I wanted to change it up a bit with basic diagonal stripes.

The next step was the favors and my husband was the real brain behind a lot of this. At first, he really wanted to get wooden toys for all the kids, but after looking at cost and availability we ended up going the plastic route with a little variety that matched our personalities. The favor bags we used were actually on clearance on Target and matched the color scheme we already had. Score!!

The decorations we used were pretty standard. We got some blue and red balloons and I made a banner for the wall behind the cake and for his high chair. Instructions on how to make the banner can be found by clicking here.

The guest book was a Pinterest inspired idea of using a book that goes along with the event and having everyone sign it. I LOVE these book ideas as I really believe in fostering a live for reading in our kids at a very early age. Our daughter can often be found with a book in her bed and I could not be more proud of that fact. I just love it and hope we are teaching him the same habits.

The food….can I just say YUM!! We went with a party time of noon, so that meant a full lunch spread was on the agenda. Normally, for parties we go with the BBQ hot dog and hamburger route, but since this was the middle of March in Montana, the weather could not be depended on for that. Therefore, we went for our next standby of pulled pork. It feeds a lot of people, doesn’t require constant attention at the time of the event, and is a pretty universal crowd pleaser. The recipe we used can be found here. It was so delicious that any description that I could try to write would not give it justice. The sides we had included my dad’s potato salad, my husband’s macaroni salad, and a fruit salad that I make. The drinks we decided on to go with our nostalgic kid theme were the barrel juice drinks that takes me back to my younger years.

Finally, the cake and sweets table. I found some cute tins at the dollar section of Target and filled them with a small assortment of candy to have available for all the kids at the party and to take home with them in their goodie bags. The most popular item was the little red fish, but I think the adults ate most of those. When I make cakes, I have a hard time visualizing what it will turn into when I’m done. With these cakes, I wanted to keep with the blue and red theme, but didn’t want it to look like a superhero cake. For the guest cake, I did a two tiered cake. The bottom layer was covered with blue fondant with the words Happy Birthday using the pre-made alphabet sugar sheet. The top layer was covered with white fondant and accented with red fondant stripes. The cake topper was made using the Boys Will Be Boys cricut cartridge and toothpicks. I love how it came together even though I didn’t have a set plan going in. The smash cake I tried to make look like one of those old drum toys. The coloring was off, but I still enjoyed how it turned out. However, our boy was not feeling great the day of the party and did not want a lot to do with any of the food and much to our dismay did not smash the cake like we hoped he would. Our daughter did the same thing. Probably a good thing for us, but slightly disappointing at the time.

I hope you all enjoyed reading about our fun first birthday party for our boy and got a few cute ideas along the way. I certainly enjoyed planning it out and putting it on and look forward to many more to come. Have a happy day!