First Birthday Decorations

We celebrated our son, Baby Bear's first Birthday recently.  We had a small party and I wanted to share some of the decorations.  It seems almost silly to make a big deal about a one year old's Birthday, since really he had no idea what was going on, but we wanted to celebrate his first year of life and make it special for him.  We tried to make the party simple, but fun for him.  The menu included his favorites: organic hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, and steamed veggies.

We made some simple, festive decorations.  Tissue poms are a great, inexpensive way to add big pops of color, so I hung a few of those around our dining room.

My husband mentioned to me that some of his siblings have a Birthday banner that they use for all the Birthdays in the family, and I thought it would be a nice tradition for us to have too.  I raided my scrap bin and made us one of fun, bold fabrics. 

I recently recovered my son's high chair in Alexander Henry's 2D Zoo to go with our new blue kitchen walls and so I kept the decoration colors in a similar color scheme.

We are in the process of remodeling in our kitchen, so you will notice the nice pile of laminate flooring and padding in the corner.  I thought about moving them for the party, but they are so heavy.  In hind sight, however, I would have moved at least the padding, as it showed up in a lot of the pictures of the party.

For the table cloth and plates, I found a playful coordinating set of "First Birthday Boy" plates, cups, hats, and tablecloth.  I used my plain white serving dishes since everything else had so much pattern to it.

The cake was intended to be blue.  We eat organically and didn't want to use artificial food coloring, but I still wanted to have a festive cake.  So I decided to try India Tree's Nature's Colors food coloring, made from edible plants.  As I was reading the coloring instructions, I knew that it wasn't really going to work.  You see, Nature's Colors work well, but they are sensitive to the pH level in the frosting.  The pH level of butter can really throw things off, so it's best to use more of a heavy cream based frosting.  By the time I had read this (at the last minute, right before the party) I had already made my cream cheese frosting, which has a good deal of butter in it.  I moved forward, still not wanting a white cake, and what we got was a little closer to lavender.  Next time I'll know how to do things just right!  My son could not have cared less that the cake wasn't exactly blue. 

We gave him the top tier and he went to town!  He actually only took about two bites out of it before we took it away, but he did have fun pushing it around his high chair tray and playing in the frosting.  All in all, he had a great time, and we considered the party a success!  I hope this gives you some ideas for fun Birthday parties too!