Creative Birthday Parties - Part 1

I just made my annual trip to Kinkos to print birthday party banners, party favors and other paper items.  This year's theme is Daniel Tiger and I found quite a bit of pre-made free printables on the PBS Kids website, but I also made some of my own for party favors.

I like to make as much as I can and print it myself because it saves us money.  I have so much scrapbooking stuff left over from my days as a Creative Memories consultant.  It will take a lot of years of birthday parties before I run too low on supplies to make my own banners.

I will post this year's birthday party after it's over, but here is a glimpse at our first party to give you an idea of what can be done.  Mind you, most of these ideas are from Pinterest - what a wonderful and overwhelming tool for party planning.

EG's first birthday was an owl theme with pink and orange accents.  The weather behaved perfectly for an outdoor party on our back deck.  This was very good, because we couldn't all fit inside the house!

The banner was so big, we had to hang it outside!

 

I looked for girly owl clip art on the internet and found this little owl with flowers.  I used it on her invitation, which I created using digital scrapbooking software and printed it on photo paper, and also on the custom stickers.  Later when I was looking for plates, I found that the image I had been using was a paper plate from a party supply company.  So I bought the plates and a matching balloon for the party.  We didn't need to buy plasticware or napkins because we had plenty left over from our wedding (you will see this theme throughout this post).

 

 

 

 

My cousin Stephanie, who made our wedding cake, made the cake and she used that same owl image to make the cake topper.  Isn't it so, so cute!  She also made her an extra cupcake/smash cake.  Carmelized apple cake with buttercream frosting, if you're wondering :)

 



 

I made owls out of paper lanterns (that we had left over from our wedding) and scrapbook paper from my stash.  I also printed pictures of EG from her first year and used colorful paper to make birthday hats on them.

 

 

I also made owl cookies, using white cookie frosting, chocolate chips and candy corns.  The cookie itself was a circle with some added triangles for ears.  They could easily be made into cats too, just decorate the face differently.  

  

My choice of table covering was white paper cloth (leftover from our wedding), topped with colorful wrapping paper.

 

 Stay tuned for our Curious George 2nd birthday party!