Baby Boy's 1St Birthday

I say keep it simple so not to overwhelm the little guy! Save the cool stuff for the following years...

For my son's 1st birthday we had a color party. I made the invitations on primary color card stock - red, orange, yellow, green and blue. We asked everyone invited to wear a shirt the same color as their invitation. Decorations of course were easy - different color balloons, plates, cups, plastic wear and napkins. For the cake I made a round cake and drew different color balloons on it. They don't really play games at that age so you don't have to worry about that. We made small goody bags for all of the kids with fruit chews, crayons and small note pad and tied a balloon on the bags. It was really simple and lots of fun

We had a football tailgate party and called it "Will's 1st Down"

Hi L.. We kept it pretty simple for when our little guy turned one. We rented the community room in a friend's building. It was a nice sized room and had a kitchen and a bathroom and already had tables and chairs. That cost us only $25 for up to 4-5 hours. We decorated with long hanging streamers for his little friends to grab and lots of balloons. We also printed out lots and lots of pictures from his first year, mounted them on construction paper and hung them around the room. We bought 2 blow-up pools and filled one with sand from Toys R Us and the other with ball-pit balls from Toys R Us, making our own sandbox and ball pit. We also brought our rubber alphabet mats and laid them out in the pool area making it an obvious play area. We also brought some fun toys from home so all the little ones could play with something. We had ride on toys, blocks, books, cars...
We kept the food simple. Homemade chicken fingers and fruit salad for the litte ones and chicken and steak kabobs for the adults as well as a bunch of other tasty treats.
We made our little guy his own cake so that he could do what he wanted with it and made cupcakes for everyone else. We also did this for his second birthday. We played a mix of adult and child friendly music. We didn't hire anyone or stick to any theme. Although I did have Sesame Street plates and napkins. We kept it simple and small and my son and his guests, as well as ourselves had a great time. Congrats on your son's 1st!

We went way over the top for my son's party, but it became a family reunion for both sides with family flying in from all over. It was wonderful to have everyone there to celebrate! Essentially, it was a BBQ with outdoor games set-up in our yard.

The best thing we did was have my sister in charge of the camera. It was her job to make sure that we had at least one picture of each guest with the little man. We printed them and included them in his thank-you's.

If you're looking for party favors, I have a personalized party favor business and have lots of great things for a boys' first birthday! my website is www.littleshopoffavors.com. I also give a 10% discount to Mamasource moms! Good luck with the planning. I know he'll have a great time no matter what!

For my son's first birthday, I was adamant to not have a TV-character theme party (too predictable!). So I did a circus theme, but instead of using primary colors I used pastels (lavender, light turquoise, soft yellows and oranges, etc). I found only a set of matching party hats, all in pastels, and I purchased clown mylar balloons from Party City. It turned out more beautiful than I imagined. The colors especially were so pretty -- they were not to "baby-shower"-like but not were not to garish either, just perfect for a little guy!

My son loved the blue octopus from Baby Einstein, so we decided to do an "Under the Sea" themed 1st birthday party for him. I made an octopus birthday cake (took me 10 hours to make.. and so worth his smile), we had a water globe craft table, we played a catch of the day game - where my husband hid behind a large piece of wood that was decorated like a wave... the kids would throw the fishing line behind the wood and then he would drag the line and clip a fish bean bag to it and throw it back to them. When it was my son's turn... my husband threw all of the extra bean bag fish out to him! The favors were sand pails with all ocean themed items and the balloons were all sea/ beach colored. Our invitations were "sand in a bottle" invites that that were mailed without envelopes! You can just mail the bottles. The invite topics were all sea related.. ex) RSVP was S.O.S. I think you should pick a theme based on what your son likes and go from there.. whether you have a big or small gathering... it's your call. Just be sure to take pictures of the cake eating :) Have fun and check out this website where I got many great ideas from: www.birthdaypartyideas.com HAVE FUN!