Get Creative!: August 2014

Flashback Friday! Thought I would take this opportunity to tell you about My daughter's first birthday party (who is now 3) wow how time flies!

I am always trying to come up with different themes for the kids parties. And first birthday's are always a bit more tricky. They are too little to say what they want, and you want to throw a party that is age appropriate yet not too babyish.

So I came up with a Bath Theme:

The Lyrics from "Splish Spalsh, I was Taking a Bath" turned out to be my inspiration.

I took a bunch of props out to our trailer for a mini photo shoot, so that I could incorporate pictures of Opal into the invitation. For the front picture, I choose my favorite dresses that she wore from Newborn to 12 months. Strung up a cloths line and hung them with clothes pins. I think it was a cute way to show how much she had grown in her first year.

For the inside, we used a tin bucket, filled it with water and bubble bath and took pictures of her having a bath. Printed out the party details and incorporated the lyrics of the song subtly through-out the invite.

My favorite part of the invitation was the back. We brought some teddy bears and placed them in a row with Opal facing away from the camera. The saying I placed under the picture says it all!

I decorated for the party in bath like colours. Meaning; blues and teals, white, silver and white. I threw in some yellow and hinted the decor with rubber duckies.

The wall that accented as a backdrop for the cake eating pictures, was a full balloon wall. Basically I stapled (I know, but it only made tiny holes! And at that point I was too frustrated with the 10 different tapes I tried to let it bother me) different coloured and sized balloons to the wall to represent floating bubbles.

I incorporated a floral centerpiece of yellow mums and white hydrangeas with blue and teal glass gems and white feathers filling the clear vase.

I hung yellow paper lanterns and teal tissue puffs in various areas and used white feather boas to add a sudsy look.

I also incorporated more of the song lyrics with a picture display from the photo shoot. I printed the various pictures with one line of lyrics on each picture and hung them in order on a rope with clothes pins.

For the favors I made sponge balls. They were pretty easy to make. You find direction on how to make them here; But I bought multi-coloured sponges, cut them into strips and tied eight of the pieces together, creating a cute multi-coloured ball of sponge. I put a bubble tag on the ones we gave out at the end of the party and tied a mini duckie to the tie string. I had extras out for the kids to play with, since we set up two blow up pools in the backyard with lots of bubble bath and a bubble machine going to create a bath like atmosphere.

Another small detail that I incorporated was a bowl of bubble bath punch. It is made with blue Hawaiian juice pored over vanilla ice cream to create what looks like a very inviting bubble bath. Add some floating duckies and I think it made a great feature. (I took the picture after it had sat for a while so it doesn't look as bubbly as it was).

The table was covered with yellow satin overlays. We used yellow paper plates and found these super cute duckie napkins. I mixed them in with some plain teal napkins too, to add more of a variety in colour.

For the cake, (my favorite part!), I baked three Baby's First Birthday Cake layers. Iced between the first two layers and then took the third layer and cut a circle out of the centre leaving a ring of cake. Placed that on top the first two and iced the entire cake. I then took half chilled blue jello and filled the top layer, to make a bath tub! cute huh? I made some cake balls and covered them with blue and white chocolate partially swirled together to look like bubbles. I also formed two cake balls to look like a rubber duck and covered them in yellow chocolate.