First birthday party ideas

Hi! Our little babies are already 9 1/2 months old. Time really does fly! We are starting to think about ideas for their 1st birthday, and I thought that you all would be a great resource. I'm interested to know what themes you had, location (your house? Someone else's house? A restaurant or park?), and also, who did you invite? We had a pretty big baby shower, but I don't know if it's courtesy to invite everyone again, or just a small gathering. We have B/G twins, and love animals, outdoor activities, the Backyardigans (OK, DP and I probably like this more than the babies, but we use it to keep one occupied during naptime prep and we love it!).

Thanks for your expertise!!!!

 

here are a few things off the top of my head that i can recall..... ours was catered at my mom's house..... our goodie bags were age-specific. the babies had teething biscuits in them, which i thought was a great idea (all the good ideas came from my sil). ours was a sports theme and we bought a lot of games, prizes and a pinata at orientaltradingcompany.com.

for food we tried to have somehting for all ages. we had oaties on the table w/the appetizers! games and prizes were also age specific, so that everyone would participate in something.

we had music but no one could hear it.

for cake we got chocolate w/cream cheese frosting and let the boys eat the frosting. i wasn't into letting them have cake at that point (still am not into that!).

gl, have fun, and congrats!

 

DH and I did a small party for our twinkies (their birthday is the day after Christmas) of about 12 people, all family (my parents, his sisters and their spouses and his aunt & uncle). We did a chocolate chip cake from a bakery designed with Winnie the Pooh characters and did a Winnie the Pooh theme. I also made chocolate chip cupcakes for the babies to smash around. DH made roast beef sandwiches, we had finger foods, ordered a pizza, and had sodas. It went really well, everyone had a blast. You can make it whatever you want it to be. Enjoy and good luck!

 

Alrighty...here's what we did...and we went big-but dh has a HUGE family-and we are only going big for the first birthday, not every birthday. Anyways...

120 invited, 80 people showed up. It was at our house in October-of course it was a bit chilly that day. Ah well. Can't plan the weather. We rented a tent. DH's family owns an Italian restaurant and they did the catering. The party started at 1pm. We did the antipasto first(dh is Italian) and the boys went down for their nap as people were arriving. It was PERFECT timing. Everyone got to eat and mingle before the boys woke up. I had a little area in the yard with some baby type toys for the younger crowd which was a huge hit. We did cake at around 3/3:30pm after the boys woke up from their nap. I made #1 cookies-which was the party favors for the kids(and I basically forgot to send them home with them...). We didn't open gifts until the end of the night-after mostly everyone was gone. There were a few people who stayed later and we opened their gifts, then the rest when the boys went to bed.

All in all it went really well. We'll do it again next June for our daughter. Oh and for a theme-we just did blue/green. With sooo many people, it would have been outrageously expensive to buy themed plates, etc. The boys were designated blue/green when they had thrush and we had to keep their bottles/pacifiers separate.

Have fun planning!

 

Thanks for the ideas I used to get catalogs from Oriental Trading Company, I forgot how much stuff they have. I like the cookie/biscuit idea for favors, too. I'll look at OTC's website to get started, and I think we'll have it here at home, I didn't even think about needing a napping place! D'oh.

 

We did a Noahs Ark theme. Everything came 2 by 2.
I had balloon animals & animal crackers as my party favors.
We had it at our house. I did a spreak of snacks for the adults (fruit, veggie, meat trays etc) and finger foods for kids to nibble on.
We had about 30 people at our house and it was A LOT for me. A little overwhelming even but I wanted to have a big party.

Alot of people do SMALL gatherings when they are little like 1 friend per year of age and increase it as they get older so they dont get overwhelmed.

 

We opted to have it at a local pizza place- all of our immediate family is from out of town and at the time the house we lived in was very small for any type of gathering, over four people. We ended up having about 35 people (grandparents, aunts/uncles, a few close friends). We timed it after their nap and it worked out great, we didn't do presents at the house, we took them home and anyone who wanted to come back to the house was welcome to. We had unlimited pizza, drinks, and salad for a fee per person. I know the girls won't remember their first birthday, but it was a great excuse to get our whole family together and celebrate the fact that WE made it through the first year. I would recommend sharing this day with whoever you want. The girls birthday is in March- so we couldn't do something outside, but I would have loved to have done something at a park. Actually, we just went to a first birthday at a park that had a splash park (spray ground) type thing, they bbq'd, had cupcakes, and the kids played in the water, it was a lot of fun.

We have two girls, so "theme" wise, I just had pink and purple items and flowery type stuff.

Good luck and hope you have a great special day.