One Year in a Flash!

Did I mention that I love to plan/craft parties? My pinterest boards are full of imaginary parties that I hope to one day throw. Pinterest was just getting popular when I was planning my wedding and I made myself stay far, far away. I already had way too many DIY projects on hand. So, now that I'm a mom, my thing is to plan amazing, fun and budget-friendly birthday parties.

This is fitting that I'm writing this now, almost 6 months after our son turned a year old. I went with the theme "One year in a flash". My husband is a budding photographer, and he was responsible for taking monthly photos of our son on his "birth day". This was my favorite thing we did about documenting that lightning fast first year. Each month I would take these photos and type out his height and weight, his favorite things, first words, and other adorable tid bits. I knew I would display these at his party, but how? Well a tiny photo display and a pinterest search for "camera themed party" came up with the whole idea of "One Year in a Flash". Because, truly, I dare you to tell me when time moves faster. I feel like we just found out we were pregnant, and that was more than 2 (TWO?!) years ago.

So, like any crazy person, I started planning our son's first birthday party when he was just six months old. You only turn one once, right? So my party brain thinks in this order:

1. Theme (The most fun part for me!)
2. Location (will it hold our ginormous family and boatloads of friends for a reasonable price?)
3. Decor (Let that theme SHINE baby!)
4. Activities (fun, easy, and on theme is a plus)
5. Food (delicious, easy to prepare, at least some healthy options, and of course, on theme)
6. Favors (fun but affordable, and of course, on theme)
7. What to wear (for the birthday boy of course, no one cares what anyone else wheres haha! And, as always, of course, on theme!)

The theme was cameras and photographs and most importantly the main attraction, our son. I started out thinking I would do blue black and silver, very boyish right? Well then my love of all things vintage came out and I started buying all the vintage Kodak items I could find, within reason and budget. After that, the theme colors changed to red, yellow and black, just like their packaging colors. I must say that we wiped out an estate sale of an entire rack of vintage cameras. Amazing find, and I highly recommend estate sales when you are looking for party decor, or any type of decor, really.  I also have a friend who is a merchandiser at the most adorable thrift shop in the world (or ya know, right up the street) who helped us out by alerting us to possible party purchases. 

One of my favorite purchases for the party was the photo confetti, or aptly named Photofetti. They print your photos onto confetti and mix it in with other confetti to match your theme. Perfect for birthdays, such as this, graduation parties, bridal showers, weddings, and so much more. I loved that you could customize your package, colors, size, and down to the quantity to meet your needs (or budget). So awesome. See it in action here with some vintage cameras and film strips:

The location of the party was pretty important. I love our home, but there is no way we could have fit all of our family in friends in our 1949 cape cod, or our back yard. July + humidity + heat = unhappy party goers. We chose the multipurpose room at our local recreation complex. It has a water park, so I put on the invite that people should bring their suits and make a day of it! But there was a thunderstorm, and it was muggy.. so thank goodness for a spacious, climate controlled room with lots of tables and chairs, and outlets for food! It ended up being perfect for the day.

Decorating that big of a room was challenging, but this theme made it feel easy. We had taken so many photos that year, and here was our chance to display so many of them! 

Each Table had an Ikea double sided photo frame with some of our favorite photos from our son's first year.

Each Table had an Ikea double sided photo frame with some of our favorite photos from our son's first year.  These were affordable, and the perfect shade of red to match the theme. Also on the tables were film strips cut up. These were actually movie reels from the thrift store. If you look very closely, you can see the movie Mr. Deeds. Verrry slowly.

But let's get to what it is really all about at a one year old's birthday party, the cake eating. I made this banner using the film strip, some camera cut outs, and some tiny film reels. Putting a table cloth under the high chair is an absolute must for clean up. Party stores sell these as a thing, but seriously, you are probably already buying table cloths, buy an extra one and get yourself a latte with the extra $3. You're going to need it, if you have a one year old.

I also doctored up a party hat by adding a "1" and some black crepe paper. I will spare our son the humiliation of putting the photos of his cake smashing on here, I'm assuming he will appreciate that some day.

More of the same camera cut outs were used in making this banner. If you look closely, you can see the "favorite things" written on the monthly photos with his white onesie and tie. The large camera on the left is actually a piggy bank, my husband randomly found at a discount store while running some errands for something completely unrelated. He saw it, bought it, and brought it home to me like he had slain a dragon attacking our village. He was proud. I was proud. I love that man. It fit so perfectly into our theme, and bonus, it's an awesome piggy bank.

 I also laid his baby book out, a photo book of family photos we had taken last Easter, and two tiny photo books from my instagram feed. I couldn't decide between a poster or a book, but in the long run, practicality won. What was I going to do with a giant poster? These adorable minibooks from Printstagram were so awesome, and I still look at them frequently. Our son now likes to look at it and look at photos of when he was tiny and say "BEBE" and then my heart totally melts and I am a blubbering mess of mom tears. Oh, and also from Ikea, that film strip photo frame. Sniffle.

 My husband took some amazing photos of our son smashing up a cake. I love this series of photos. He was so serious about that cake at first.

 This banner hung above the food and was also designed after the invitations.

 If you can see behind the obscene amount of presents, and our lovely guests, you will see that I simply hung photos on twine using red clothes pins, also from Ikea.

 I also fell into the trend of giant letter balloons, teehee, pictured here, behind our son's great grandmother.

For a first birthday, the activities have to be pretty simple. Present opening and cake eating is hard work for a one year old. Thankfully my two best friends stayed with our son, ensuring he napped (!You guys are the best!), so he could be rested and ready to party. So we opened a billion presents from our many generous family and friends, ate lunch, smashed some cake. And while we did all that, folks could play I Spy. 

I spy with my little

Camera

Please help us get some great photos today!

Try to get one photo of each item on the list!

• Birthday boy
• smiles
• camera
• cake
• Grandparents
• Birthday boy with his parents
• presents
• laughter
• Hugs
• Silliness!

This list was put on every table, along with a disposable camera. I hope people had fun with it. Confession, I have yet to develop those cameras. Party mom fail. But where I won was a photo booth! Okay, it was just our camera on a tripod with a remote, have you ever priced a photo booth rental? Ridiculous. But! I did make it fancy by making a backdrop and by having lots of fun props!

 The backdrop consisted of paper chains that I glued together during various nap times, a small camera banner, and a giant crepe paper "1".that I also crafted during nap times!

Birthday Boy in photo booth action ( in his car from his Grammy that is jokingly turned into a Porsche because my husband used to own one). And a child's birthday party wouldn't be complete without a photo of the kids in attendance, well most of them!

I cannot believe that I didn't take photos of the food, but it was delish. Using these stickers I made signs for the food including brownies, *snap* pea salad, *Say mac and cheese*, and *clickin' chicken sliders*.

 The coke bottles and candy, just so happened to be in theme colors.. so.. we needed them. And those little polka dotted cups? They were for ice cream! And here's the cake!

I made the topper out of skewers, photos, and leftover camera cut outs, and placed them nicely on top of the cake that a friend of mine made. The sugar photos were printed at a local bake shop and she applied them that day. Hind sight, they should have been just a tad longer haha! But I still thought they looked great, and the cake tasted great, so that's all people really care about!

On to favors! we had lots of kids there, and as you can see our favor box on the kids table was picked nearly clean.  Red cellophane bags with red bakers twine help personalized tags that said "Thanks for making my birthday picture perfect!" with two stamps on them: 

(This is not ours, but an example of their awesome work)

The first stamp was actually a hand carved personalized stamp from this etsy shop: Fawa

The second stamp was from here of a vintage camera.

The bags were filled with tiny cameras, candy, tops, and other kid favor bag trinkets!

Finally, what the birthday boy wore. This was one of the very first things I purchased when dreaming up this party. 

Already stained from lunch, barefoot, and throwing bows. This boy knows how to party.

Party With Me had the perfect shirt. I love it still. 

And that is just about everything there is to know about our son's "One Year in a Flash"/Camera/Photo themed first birthday party. I so enjoyed planning it, and you can believe that, though on a much much smaller scale, I am already planning the next one.

And to any planning mommas reading this, stop reading this unless your kid is napping and you can't sleep! Haha seriously though, where does the time go?