My daughter's First Birthday Party

This all began when I went to a birthday party hosted by my husband's colleague.. I was very impressed with all the work she had put in and how unique the party turned out to be.. Can I pull off some thing like that?? ...I started thinking... (oh ho.. trouble!!!) My daughter was soon going to be 1, which was a big deal for me.. (yeah!! i survived one year of motherhood.. kudos to me :D.) jokes aside.. I really wanted to have a good party for my daughter's first birthday.. that would technically be the first ever "party" my husband and I would be throwing to the gazillion number of friends we made over these years!

So.. Now I am all full of desires and dreams of throwing a hand-made party, but how.. ! That's where a friend of mine came to be very helpful + all the good hearts who share their hand-made party experiences online. So my friend and I started discussing and and searching online for ideas.. I got to know so many new things of which I had no idea before (glue gun was one such thing.. believe me!!)


I had to come up with a theme to kick off the process... I liked butterfly theme - it did not sound very common to me at that time and for a first timer like me, I thought it would be easier to find ideas with this theme. After some more thoughts, I stuck to the theme - "Butterfly Garden"


I started off making some simple butterflies to get my head around the whole thing..

Made a set of simple ones with thin card stock and pipe cleaner like the one in this link - http://www.thecraftycrow.net/2009/02/pretty-folded-paper-butterflies.html


First thing to do - invitation! I like sending individual invitation cards to people, but I know the cards will just be trashed after few days or weeks.. so I decided to make a personalized soft card and email those to the guests individually - putting in the guests name in each. I did some basic work using photoshop with the little knowledge that I have and my brother completed the rest to make this beautiful card. The most difficult thing about this invitation was probably getting a good pic of my daughter !! :)




I usually would have preferred to stick to 2 color theme, but hey.. it's a butterfly party.. it has to be colorful, So I went with 4 colors - pink, purple, yellow and orange (pretty much all basic colors to make my job easier.. hee hee).


The next big thing for me was the happy birthday banner. I saw the butterfly shaped die cut card stock in Michaels which looked like a sure candidate for the banner. I used the pink and dark purple card stocks for the job. I got matching glitters, covered one side of every card stock with the glitters using a mod podge and stuck glittery 3 inch die cut letters on the glittery card. I had bought the letters from Michaels too. Though I was not sure how it would turn out, I just tried putting few big card stock sheets side by side and trimming them to look like a big butterfly and I arranged the butterfly letters on the big butterfly. And lastly, stuck some blings on the edges and threw in some flower-stickers here and there to finish up the banner.

My friend came up with this great plan of adding flowers and Risha's pictures to extend and personalize the banner more.. So, I made a big 1 inspired by this website - http://ohhappyday.com/2013/08/giant-spiral-flower-number-diy/ and some flowers similar to what's shown here - http://www.thehomesihavemade.com/2012/07/3d-paper-wall-flowers.html. I just used some old beads I had for the center piece of the flowers. We arranged all those with some of Risha's pictures on 2 disposable purple table clothes.... and the banner turned out like below..





My mom graciously helped me with her sewing skills to make a tulle table cloth for the cake table . I got the idea from this site - http://eventstocelebrate.net/2013/07/butterfly-themed-birthday-party-decorations/. I got tulle clothes from amazon, but I realized later that buying from a store would have been cost effective. But the tulle I got from amazon was 6" wide, so i did not have to cut them a lot. Thanks to friends of mine who did a wonderful job with the balloons, our cake cutting stage was all set








For the side walls of the hall, I got some 8x10 pics of Risha from all these 12 months, simply stuck them a patterned card stock to form framed pictures. Also made some tissue paper pom pom flowers and butterflies with vellum paper (http://www.artsyfartsymama.com/2011/07/butterfly-wall-hanging.html). Also used the simple butterflies I had made at the beginning for the wall. And here is how one of the walls looked like..














My friend suggested having a face painter to entertain the kids at the party and I liked the idea. I came across a photo booth when searching for party ideas and thought that could be perfectly used with the face painting.. so here I am searching for a big foam board... found one in staples and got started with the board. I made something similar to - http://ohmyhandmade.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ila_6.jpg - but with only 2 flowers. I cut and pasted some tissue papers to form the petals. For the central pistil of the flowers, I rolled yellow streamers and cut them in circles -










Just when I was glad the photo booth was over, my husband came up with the question - what about boys - how will they be interested in a flower photo booth. We had almost as many boys as there were girls in the party!! And based on his suggestion, I made a forest kinda thing on the other side of the board - used green tissue papers for grass and cheetah and tiger patterned felt cloth from hobby lobby for the face and here we have a dual sided photo booth for boys and girls.









Made the center pieces for each guest table following this tutorial -

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vqpqu_sOgcM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dvqpqu_sOgcM

And added some tulle colors to surround the flower...







This butterfly snack idea is so commonly seen online and I fell in love with that at first sight..Painted the clothes pins I had got from dollar store, added in the wiggly eyes and antennas made with pipe cleaner and used with a zip lock half filled with gold fish and half with grapes - and we have something to attract the kids :) Thanks to my dad who patiently helped with filling up the zip locks with snacks.









Along with the snacks, we had drinks for the kids.. and I made butterfly straws with the butterfly cut papers I got from etsy and paper straws from hobby lobby














And return gifts... of course i did not want to miss out on the butterfly there. I loved the burlap bags I found in papermart.com - not so expensive, different and cute. Got some butterfly felt stickers from Michaels. With an easy job of peel and stick, we have our butterfly return bags ready!!




Thanks to my friend for carving a butterfly garden out of veggies to decorate the food table.







A last minute thought -- why not include a butterfly in the candle. I just searched in google images and used the idea. Got a '1' candle from walmart. For the butterfly wings, cut a felt cloth in a butterfly shape and decorated with some blings. For the antennas, curved up floral wires. and inserted those into the candle.








Last, but definitely not the least... thanks to my dear husband not only for entertaining all my idea and efforts for the party, but also for making one of those idea real... I wanted to play some videos of Risha - but the idea came to me after talking to a friend just 2 days before the party. My husband, who is the techie person of the family, made that possible by quickly collecting some pics of videos of Risha and hooking up a TV in the hall playing all those in sequence.







After tons of visits to Michales, hobby lobby, walmart, dollar store and billions of online searches, we had a hand made party setup and the guests had so much fun.. and ... I have a story to tell my daughter when she grows up. For now, I just want to sit back and relax with all the good memories from the party and spend some time with Risha.. but can't wait to plan another hand made party :)