1st Birthday Rainbow Explosion

My baby girl recently turned one!! So hard to believe how fast the first year went. Being a party planner this was the perfect excuse to have something fun,bright and colorful.

Before she was even born I had decided on a rainbow themed first birthday. With Pinterest's help here's how it went.

First the invitation - I'm also a graphic designer so I designed this and then had it printed through VistaPrint.

Now the food, I made it light snacks and desserts since had over 100 people invited. For the snack food, we had fruit kabobs, veggies, veggie straws, cheeseballs, rainbow goldfish, big pretzel "1" and egg salad and chicken salad dollar roll sandwiches. (plate and napkins from Party City - utensils from Dollar Tree - rainbow containers from Target)

For the desserts, we had miscellaneous rainbow candy (Skittles, Gummy Bears, Starburst, M&Ms, Starburst Jelly Beans, Gumballs, Jolly Ranchers), "1" cookies (from Kim's Cookies), Fruity Pebbles Treats (made just like Rice Krispee Treats but with Fruity Pebbles), Froot Loops Candy (almond bark and Froot Loops), Cupcakes (from Sam's), and Layered Jello Salad. 

Cupcake holders and suckers from Shindigz.

Next, was the decorations, the ceiling balls were from Party City. The centerpieces were just Mason jars filled with gumballs (from Sam's). The rainbow boxes held pretzels and Chex Mix and they were from the dollar bin at Target.

So there were lots of little kids invited to the party so I wanted to be sure I had fun activities for them. We had water bottle ring toss (dyed water and swim rings). I made rainbow streamers for the kids to run around with - and they loved them! (Find out how here.) We also had coloring books out for them and pin the cloud on the rainbow.

For their take home I had several different things because of the age groups - the 0-1 year olds got a bath toy (Babies R Us) and rainbow ball (Dollar Tree) - the 1-2 year olds got bubbles, playdoh (Dollar Tree), and crayons(Office Depot) - the older kids got glow sticks (Michaels dollar bin), playdoh and crayons.

Individual packs of Skittles for everyone.

I took the picture every month with sticker on her belly and I really wanted to do something cute with them so I made this streamer to hang. We did her one year photoshoot prior to the party so I was able to use those pictures as decoration as well.

 

For the smash cake I really wanted her to have a cute background with the rainbow explosion so we hung streamers on the wall and had lots of balloons (which the kids also loved to play with). I made the sign for the front of her high chair to match the 12-month streamer.

I thought the bakery did an amazing job with the smash cake - it was everything I wanted and matched the theme perfectly! Cake from Sarah's Cake Shop.

And finally my princess had to have the perfect outfit to fit the theme! I bought her tutu from Sassafras Tutus and the shirt was made for her by Swanky Shank.

'My Favorite Things' Party

As you can tell from reading my blog (and the reason this blog even exists) I love to plan parties! So this year I wanted to have a Christmas party with my girlfriends. I decided to have a "My Favorite Things" party - it's a great way to exchange gifts with friends and it not be a burden on people's already tight Christmas budgets.

How a "My Favorite Things" party works... I asked everyone to bring one of their most favorite things within a $10 budget - and then buy three of the item and bring them wrapped separately. I also asked everyone to bring their favorite appetizer or dessert to share.

My evite read - 

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes,
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes,
Silver white winters that melt into springs,
These are a few of my favorite things...

Think of something that you LOVE (around $10). Bring THREE of that item. We will draw names and everyone will go home with THREE new favorite things. Please wrap each gift separately.

Also, bring your favorite holiday appetizer or dessert to share. I will provide the wine and drinks. Come celebrate the holidays with a night out with the girls.

Then I started to plan what the night would look like - first, the color scheme - I found cute snow flake plates at Dollar Tree so I went with the red and white colors. I found fun decorations at Dollar Tree and at Michael's (three weeks from Christmas it was all 70% off).

Next, I thought about what fun drinks to have. I found out that the day I picked was National Hot Cocoa Day so that helped a lot - I went with a Hot Chocolate Bar - of course with everything you need to spike it a little too. I made homemade crock pot hot chocolate found here and paired it with peppermint sticks (matched color scheme too), mini marshmallows, mini chocolate chips, and Pirouettes. To spike it I had Peppermint Schnapps and Marshmallow Vodka. I designed tags for everything to dress it up a bit and used ribbon I found at 70% off at Michael's to attach the tags.

I wanted another drink option (mostly because I wanted to use those cute paper straws - these were found at Target - $4.99). I found a red drink recipe here and called it Pomegranate Champagne. It was so fun and whimsical. I found plastic champagne glasses 2 for $1 at Dollar Tree.

And of course I had a few bottles of wine and wanted to dress them a bit so I made them into reindeer with pipe cleaners and googly eyes.

The food was kept pretty simple as it was brought by everyone so I couldn't make tags or anything but the girls brought some fun festive options so I wanted to share!

So how the sharing of gifts works... I made little sheets of paper that matched the theme and had the girls all write their name on three sheets and place them in a glass jar. We went around the room and each girl picked three names from the jar. Just to add a little to it I found this fun favorite things game that I had each girl read their answers before giving their gifts out. When the three picked had their gifts they all opened them and then if necessary the gift was explained by the giver. Some of the items the girls brought were an oil mister, favorite bottle of wine, scarves, Starbucks gift card, candles, nail polish, fresh tea cup, egg boiling timer, chocolates and make up brushes. It was so fun to learn something new about my friends and receive great gifts!

As an extra bonus, I gave each girl a notebook and pen to keep track of the other favorite things so they could add it to their list for Santa. I found the notebooks in the dollar bin at Michael's.

For the party favor I had my friend make some of my favorite cookies (Kim's Cookies). They were so cute! 

Hope this helps you plan this fun party for your girlfriends!

A Ladybug Baptism

My daughter was recently baptized and being someone who loves to plan a party - I had to have a cute theme for the BBQ following the ceremony. So we had a ladybug BBQ party!

I found a lot of the decorations on this great discounted website - Birthday in a Box. I supplemented the decorations with solid colored plates, napkins, utensils and table clothes from the Dollar Store (red checkered table cloth from Party City).

 

 

 

I made the cookies with a friend who is great at decorating - but we bought the little ladybug candies from a local baking shop.

 

The pretzel is from a local pretzel store - Pretzel Boys.

And of course after the baptism I had to change the little one out of her gown and into an appropriate ladybug outfit :) (Carter's from Kohl's)