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 – EDIT – They are no longer available from this site.
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
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?