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Towards the end of January our beautiful little boy turned one! Even though babies don’t really understand the idea of a birthday party and are happy with very little fuss, I have always liked to celebrate our children’s first birthday in part to recognise our achievement as parents, making it successfully through the first year of a child’s life. As wonderful as it is to have a newborn and then infant, it can also be hard work, very tiring and an emotional time. To me the first birthday party signals moving on to a new stage in family life.
When bubs was born, by pure coincidence he received a number of lovely gifts that all had rockets and space themed decorations on them. A gorgeous towel set from a friend, a warm sleeping sack from an aunt and a beautiful hand made quilt for his cot from another lovely friend. So choosing a theme for his 1st birthday party was very easy – Space! (I have listed other ideas for children’s first birthday parties, which can be found towards the end of the post. Click here to go straight to the list. )
The gorgeous drawings on the invitation and the lolly bags are by Kate and I bought them from Pickleberry Pop (Digi Scrapbooking). Kate has some gorgeous lay outs, frames, words, designs and characters. You can see them all here.
As his birthday fell in school holidays, even though I only invited a few families, there was still plenty of children to make it a lovely festive occasion. At this age, no games are required, so I just worked on making the space available enticing for little ones.
I had helium balloons with weights to keep them with in reach spread out across the room and had the babies siblings, create rockets and space ships from a range of blocks placed in different areas of the room for the little ones to play with (top photo).
With the party food, I do try to keep it aligned to the theme if I can. I also made food that the one year olds could eat, but that would still be attractive to the older children and the adults. The food was served in individual lunchboxes.
Star Chips, to go with Chicken Schnitzel Strips
Rocket Rolls (Sausage Rolls)
Moon Ice Cream Cake (I used the honeycomb cake recipe, but just omitted the honeycomb!)
Lolly Bags
I made up two different types of lolly bags. One for the older children which had a Milky Way bar and Starburst lollies. For the little ones, I bought some baby fruit sticks, rice cakes and tiny teddies.
If this is the first birthday party that you are planning, you might like to read my 10 Point Children’s Party Plan Post.
1st Birthday Party Ideas
Here are some other ideas for themes for a one year old birthday party:
- Favourite Colour – pink, blue and silver, primary colours are all colour based parties that I have done.
- Favourite Animal – Elephants, Safari Animals, Australian Animals, whatever the little ones love!
- Favourite Nursery Rhyme – Old McDonald, This little pig, Jack and Jill,
- Favourite Story Book – Where is the green sheep?, Blue Hat, Green Hat (Sandra Boynton), Hairy Maclary
- Beach – Sand and water play based
- Trucks and Cars – Lots of big cars to push and drive around
What sort of parties have you had for your one year olds?
7 comments...read them below or add one
They are fantastic ideas! I love planning birthday parties, one bonus to having a significant age gap between my sister and myself. I planned and operated most of her parties and let mum sit back and do nothing.
When I was at TAFE studying the Diploma I actually considered going into a business around planning and hosting children’s parties with other trained early childhood professionals.
I was actually going to start writing up some posts regarding how to plan for parties and themes for parties
So stay tuned on my blog. Of course, only if you want to 
Great post!
{I would have retweeted this but unfortunately my twitter doesn’t want to work for me and hasn’t since around 2pm this afternoon}
.-= miss carly´s last blog ..Update! =-.
I haven’t ever actually given any of my kids a one year old birthday party, but I love what you have done here! Everything looks soo cute… I do agree too, it does feel like a big achievement to make it through that first year, so happy birthday to your little boy, and congrats to your and your significant other. My youngest is having her second birthday in a few months, and I really can’t get my head around where the time has gone.
.-= Hear Mum Roar´s last blog ..How to make fingerpaint the easy way =-.
Happy 1st Birthday to your little boy! Gosh that year went quick
Great ideas and I love the balloons and their weights. Love the lolly bag ideas too. I have until August for my bubs 1st birthday and I want to do something a little special too. Thanks for the ideas.
.-= nell´s last blog ..Menu Plan Monday – 15th February 2010 =-.
Great timing! I was looking for “boy” ideas, as my son turns 1 in July.
My daughter’s 1st birthday party was an afternoon tea, held in our backyard. The theme was “butterflies and bugs”. It was a cute theme for a little girl and there were plenty of decorative bits and pieces available to fit the theme. My daughter LOVED ladybirds at the time and “bug” was actually one of the words she learnt to say before 12 months, so it just had to be!
.-= Julie´s last blog ..3 Christian resources for kids =-.
I forgot to mention, the “butterflies and bugs” theme made my first attempt at a birthday cake easy. I simply made cupcakes, iced them all with green “grass” and used lollies to make spiders, butterflies, ladybirds and caterpillars (I got inspiration from the women’s weekly cake book, but didn’t follow their instructions precisely)
.-= Julie´s last blog ..3 Christian resources for kids =-.
Just thought everyone might want to know about a new website launched in Feb called Generous Party. It’s an online children’s party planning website for parents who want a smart, eco-friendly way to organise a child’s birthday party and to also help some of their favourite children’s charities as well, including the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and ActionAid. The site include e-card invites, RSVP Tracker, Party Planner and Charity Donation Tracker.
You can visit it here – http://www.generousparty.com
Ann
[...] cool things people have done with my designs. Hop in over to Planning With Kids to see her fabulous First Birthday Party Ideas for Boys – including her invitation using my Fly Me To The Moon doodles (which have been retired from [...]