This coming Wednesday (the 25th) is Makenna's first birthday! I can't believe my baby girl is turning one! This past year has gone by SO fast! It makes me sad that I'm about to have to stop giving her bottles, because I love that part of my night so much. She is such a sweet little angel baby! But, that is another topic for another day. Possibly Wednesday. This blog is about her birthday party, which we had yesterday!
I had a TON of fun planning Makenna's party. I mean, seriously a HUGE amount of fun. I am going to put tons of links and pictures in case you are interested in doing something similar, or if you just need some great designers to make your party ideas come to life!
The theme for the party was "owls", and the colors were light blue, light pink, and white. I started browsing blogs trying to get ideas, and I found several cute owl parties that inspired me:
Birthday Girl Blog (and seriously, check out all her other party ideas! AWESOME)
Kelly's Korner (I linked to her "show us your kids' birthday parties. There are a couple hundred ideas!)
Random girl I found on Kelly's Korner that did an owl partyAfter seeing all of these really cute parties, I started browsing etsy, and they have TONS of owl party products. So I narrowed it down to the products by
SweetBeeDesignShop. She made my party invitation, my banner, and my favor tags. I purchased the digital files, and then printed them out on cardstock and put them together myself. (Well, actually Casey printed it, and cut it out, and helped me put it together!)She did a GREAT job. It was also nice that it was a digital file, because then I could print extra owls to decorate around the party in other ways. Like, I made a sign for the front door, decorated Makenna's high chair, and glued some of the owls to sticks and put them in the yard, and decorated the table. I also found directions to make
pompoms, and made kajillions of them and hung them everywhere. I also scrapbooked Makenna's first 11 months of life, using all those pics I have been posting each month! You can't see them very well in the pic, but it also turned out really cute.
For the food, my sister-in-law helped me come up with a few cute ideas. I made
owl cake pops, dipped marshmellows, and made
pretzel m&m treats. Since our party was from 10-12 we had lunch. We had chicken salad sandwiches, turkey and swiss sandwiches, hot spinach dip, cheeseballs, fruit kabobs, and ham and cheese kabobs for the kiddos. My father-in-law made the chicken salad, and everything was YUMMO! For the punch, I just did cherry limeades from Sonic. Super easy!
I ordered the cake from
Simply Sweet Bakery. She also did a great job! I sent her a design I found, plus Makenna's invitation, and the cake turned out perfect!
For activities, I chose for the kids to make an owl puppet craft, which I found the patterns for
here. Instead of having the kids color the peices, I cut them out of scrapbook paper. Each owl had its own pattern, and they were super cute! We also played "Pin the beak on the owl" which did not work out too well. But, it was a nice effort! Then the kids just played at the park behind our house for a bit before we opened gifts.
I ordered her outfit from several different shops on etsy, as well. I blogged about her photo shoot in my last post, if you want to see it up close! Here are the shops, and some pics!
Tutu (it was only $10)
Shirt (she is the bomb.com. beautiful work! I have ordered a few shirts from her!)
BloomersBow
My sister-in-law recommended a girl in Shreveport who made sugar cookies for the party favors. I found a design I liked on etsy, and the girl was able to make them almost exactly like them! They were super cute, and yummy!
We had a great time at the party, and it was really fun to plan, but I am definitely glad it's over, because it was exhausting making everything! A special thanks goes to my in-laws for all their help with the food, my sister Emily for taking pictures, and my husband for letting me do this!
As always, there are TONS more pictures on facebook!
