My baby girl is TWO today!!! I can barely remember her as a tiny baby anymore - instead I see a boisterous little girl who loves giving big hugs, running fast, reading books, eating any produce she can find, and generally creating chaos. She makes me laugh every day with her elephant impression and when she requests "blueberry tummy" and "strawberry tummy" after I blow raspberries on her tummy. I love that little girl to pieces!
After our giant birthday party for Mia last year (it was the last time we had people to our house!) I tamed it down a little, you know, mainly because of the pandemic. We celebrated over the weekend with just my parents and my sister's family, and a whole lot of balloons. I didn't go for a theme this time, and instead had the theme just be "pink birthday."
For decor, I found this balloon kit on Amazon. I keep complaining about the effort we put into it, but really it probably took Jeff and I an hour and a half to put it together, and that includes manually blowing up all of the balloons because I didn't realize until too late that the package said you should definitely use a pump ;) And the impact is real! It looks so good in photos, and is still looking pretty good several days later because I told Jeff we had to leave it up until Mia's actual birthday. The kit included balloon tape (a long ribbon with holes) that you insert the balloons into, which made things really easy. It also had glue dots for filling in gaps, which worked amazingly well!
I also bought the matching streamer kit off of Etsy. The balloon kit and streamer kit are made in the UK and I don't know what the deal is, but there were a ton of vendors on Etsy from the UK just straight up selling these kits they didn't make. Not sure how that's allowed, but if you see one with pictures that look like this, chances are it's the exact same thing. I bought two of the streamer kits and I definitely recommend that to get a full look if you're covering a space more than six feet wide. The streamer kits were way more frustrating for me to put up than the balloons even though they look simple (partially because Mia was refusing to nap while I was working on them and just screaming into the monitor). The problem is that the string they provide in the kit is stretchy, so it slowly drooped as I added more and more streamers to it. I definitely recommend using regular fishing wire instead!
The only other decoration we had this year was the Happy Birthday sign - I made it on my Cricut! That thing has honestly saved me so much money just in banners that it's going to pay itself off soon ;) I used this paper for it.
The cake was by my friend Laura at Butter Cream Flour. Her cakes are actually the best I've ever tasted and they're so beautiful too! She ends up booked solid some months so definitely reach out a few weeks early if you're interested!
And then I decided to put together a couple of little gift bags for my sister's kids and then for Mia to bring to her preschool pod buddies at school today. I made the little birthday cupcake cutouts on my Cricut (using this free SVG), and also wrote the names on the tags using the Cricut pen (note - the pen tool outlines fonts when it draws them, so I just colored in the insides of the letters by hand).
And now get ready, because here are a few more photos from the day:
Follow along with everything Kristina does via Bloglovin!
Oh hi! How many pictures of my daughter's first birthday party were you hoping to see today? Oh a million okay cool!
(PSA: No babies were put at risk for this photo, you can just barely make out that Jeff and my mom were both behind the table holding her!)
We threw a Mia in ONEderland theme party for Mia's first birthday party, and it was so, so fun to put together. If you're looking for some party inspiration, or maybe just some cute photos of a baby tasting frosting for the first time, then this is the post for you!
I've been putting off writing this post because I knew how much work was going to go into it. But, since I waited, it's already incredible to look back. The party was on March 1st, and I didn't think twice about having thirty people over to our house. I'm so glad we were able to have the party before the pandemic hit the US and we started social distancing. I know it's such a little thing when there are so many more sacrifices being made in the world right now, but the party brought me (and hopefully Mia!) so much joy.
I first started really thinking about Mia's first birthday party the week after Christmas when we were staying at my in-law's house. I was up with Mia waaaaaay before everyone else, so I hit up Pinterest to start looking for ideas. I wasn't actually setting out to have a true theme, I was really planning on just doing some pretty pink whimsical decorations and calling it a day. But the idea of an "Alice in ONE-derland" theme party was so fun it just stuck with me! Alice in Wonderland is such a fun theme because there is SO much content from the book and movies that you can really take it in a lot of directions and incorporate little touches everywhere.
I started with the idea for the greenery backdrop. One thing that always bothers me when I host parties is that I don't have a great staging area. My photos always end up with my giant bookcase in the background, which I usually love but ends up taking away from things. My initial thought was to just take everything off the bookshelf and decorate it with Alice in Wonderland themed items, but then I realized I could just cover everything up! I bought this green topiary backdrop, which is basically just a super-lightweight sheet, and draped it over the bookcase. (It was literally attached with packing tape after I kept neglecting to buy zip ties, whoops!)
The "Mia in ONEderland" words are just cut from cardstock on my Cricut. You can find them here if you want to download. Sorry, it isn't editable for you to be able to pop in another name - I don't own the font or I would! I'm happy to quickly edit the file for you if you shoot me an email.
For the display table, I mostly just shopped my house to find things that would work on top of this moss table runner. Some ideas of things you could use would be pretty jars and containers, cake stands, tea pots/cups (I bought this toy set on Amazon and planned for it to be one of Mia's presents), keys, anything rabbit-related, clocks, watches, top hats, etc. I added some "eat me" signs that were made with removable vinyl on my Cricut, the file to download is here. I added Easter candy (timing worked out pretty well for me!) but you could also order pastel candy online, as well as frozen macaroons from Trader Joe's. Yes, that is a thing, and yes, they were delicious!!
The cakes were by my friend Laura at Butter Cream Flour. (Cakes because yes, I did get a separate smash cake. I figured, if I was going to go for it, I should really go for it.) I wanted something that looked like the cake in the Disney movie, and she delivered! Laura is actually just starting doing custom bakery here in Chicago and is incredible, everyone was raving that it was the best cake they'd ever had. If you're looking for a custom cake or other dessert (her Reese's cheesecake was honestly one of the best things I've ever had and I don't usually even like cheesecake) be sure to hit her up!
The one thing I really knew about planning a first birthday party ahead of time (besides letting the baby eat some cake!) was that it was your chance to put all of those month-by-month photos on display!
I took photos in Mia's crib every month using the same sheet and similar outfits (all with some pink!) so they'd feel consistent. If I were to do it over again, I might also try to figure out how to get consistent lighting, as I just used natural lighting which was dramatically different in every picture and took some (pretty poor) Photoshop editing to attempt to correct.
Anyway, I got all of the photos printed as 4x6 prints, used a hole punch on the top corners, and then mod-podged month numbers on them. I used this gold glitter paper, and cut them out using my Cricut. You can download the month numbers file here.
The hanging flowers on the fireplace were an impulse buy from Michael's, they're just faux-floral garlands (not available online but here is something similar). I had Jeff hang them using little command hooks. They're so pretty, they're actually still up. Don't judge me, I swear I took down the rest of the decorations!
Another fun idea I had was to print out a bunch of photos of Mia from throughout the year, trying to get as many extended family members in with her as possible. I hung them on our little display board, and added an extra floral garland around the frame with more Command hooks.
For Mia's outfit, I wanted to find something that resembled Alice's outfit from the movie but wasn't a costume. This dress is so cute and easy (and the cake washed right out too!!) and could work for a number of occasions, but with the black hair ribbon, white tights, and black shoes, it was definitely a nod to Alice.
For beverages, I used a big drink dispenser with a "drink me" sign that was more removable vinyl that I printed with my Cricut - get the file here. I used this punch recipe, but since there were a bunch of kids on the invite list I left the alcohol on the side.
I made a couple of other things on the Cricut too, including This Way/That Way signs (vinyl stickers on construction paper) that I had lining the staircase as you enter our unit, "Recycle Me" and "Toss Me" removable vinyl on our trash and recycling bins, tea cup cutouts on one of the walls, little Cheshire Cat window clings around the room, a Cheshire Cat smile on the bathroom mirror to freak people out, and the "every adventure requires a first step" window cling on the mirror in our entryway. Here is a zip file with all of the free SVG files you can print yourself!
I designed the invites too, but ended up sending out a Paperless Post so the one in the pictures is one I printed at the last minute before the party.
