Tuesday 11 September 2012

Rainbow themed first birthday party

So Ava's first birthday has come and gone, and what better way to celebrate her first year of life by throwing a big birthday bash. The planning started a few months back when I was trying to think of a theme for the party. One year olds may not show too much interest in one specific theme so you can't go wrong with a colour theme to grab your child's attention. Since Ava cannot tell me what her favourite colour is, I thought rainbow colours would do just fine! So our rainbow coloured theme turned into a blow out of rainbow decorations (both home made and bought) as well as rainbow themed food, cake and loot bags for the children. We have lots of family and friends with children so we had about 50 people (including children) at our home for the party. Praying that the weather would be nice enough to use our backyard. I had a vision in my head of what I wanted for the decorations and by shopping around at the party stores I could not find what I needed to fulfil this vision. So I decided to make my own decorations. Below are some pictures of home made, very easy to make decorations.
 
     
                                            
                         

Instructions:

Heart streamers- Cut 7 strips of construction paper; 2 long, 3 medium and 2 short. Lay them on a table in this order; long, medium, short, medium, short, medium, long. hold them all together in that order at the bottom. the middle medium piece is the piece you will hang it from. Fold the three strips that are on one side of the middle piece in to form a heart. Do the same thing with the other side. Either glue or staple the bottom so all the pieces are secure. thread fishing wire through the top of the middle strip to hang them.

Mega blocks are very easy to create letters and theymake a great centre piece for a table.

Birthday sign- using foam paper, cut out shapes and letters. Hot glue them together and thread together with ribbon.

Popsicle stick streamers- simple! coloured popsicle sticks glued (hot glue gun) to fishing wire, easy and looks great.

Giant Pom Poms-Take 5-6 large rectangles of tissue paper. Stack on top of one another and fold the long side back and forth to make a fan shape. Tie twine in the middle of the fan to break it in half. Once its tied, pull each individual piece of tissue paper towards the middle carefully. Continue to pull each piece on all sides until it creates a large pom pom.

Now that I have explained how to make some of my homemade decorations, I will share a few more ideas and pictures from ava's birthday party. Balloons are great decorations, but there are ways to make balloons look more creative.



Flower balloons- blow up 5 of the same colour same size balloons. Tie them all together. Blow up 2 other balloons the same colour but smaller than the first 5. Tie the smaller balloons, in the middle of each side to create a flower shape.

Balloon collage- Blow up and tie together 4 balloons of each colour. Thread twine with a needle through the knots of each colour bundle. Push each bundle together and hang the twine on each side.

Rainbow food galore! I wanted to bring the rainbow theme into the food that we were serving as well so we had a rainbow themed fruit platter, veggie platter, cupcakes, cake and rice krispy squares dipped in chocolate. the spread looked great!










 
 

I wanted to have a something that Ava could have when she is older as a keepsake from her first birthday. I created a signing board of a collage of  black and white pictures from Ava's first year of life. The pictures were glued onto a large board and arranged in the shape of a large 1.  Everyone at the party had a great time looking at the pictures, signing the board and writing messages that Ava will read when she is older.

Loot bag time!!! I thought it would be nice to pesonalize loot bags for each child that would be aattending the party. So there were two parts to the loot bags. The first part was a pail with the child's name on it, filled with goodies, like books, balls, bath toys, cars, and treats. The second part was that I created a personalized picture frame for each child with their name on it. Inside the frame I put a picture of that child and Ava together. It was a great hit at the party and the children loved having something they could take home to hang on their wall. Some examples below:

                                         

                                         

                                         

                                         

        

        

         

          
 
            
 
Last but not least after this long blog, a great way to entertain children at a party with music, dancing, parachute games, tatoos, balloon animals and a giant, fury Elmo!!! The children had a blast!



Hope you enjoyed! Until next time :)
       



No comments:

Post a Comment