So I love planning. I really do. I love organizing, thinking of the details, brainstorming ideas, and entertaining.
Definitely kids birthdays can be stressful, without a doubt. However, because a first is caught in the middle of wanting to make it special and the child themselves not remembering it, you must decide for yourself how elaborate you want to get.
For me, we have lots of kids in our lives, so it's a chance to throw a themed, fun-filled event for our close friends and family. I chose to do a theme, we wanted to make it a daytime party with entertainment. We plan to keep it fairly low key for the next couple of birthdays, then at age 4 or 5, I am sure birthday parties will be a regular occurrence with their own school friends. Therefore, I love having fun with a theme of my liking for their first.
For Caiden's, we did a fairly large BBQ party at a park which had playgrounds and water park. The party was Curious George themed. We had tonnes of food, pinata, cake, cupcakes, goodie bags, freezies, candy jars and a picture frame for photo fun. I had fun tying in blue and yellow colours and the theme into the details. It was a lot of work but it was awesome!
So now it was Rayna's turn! I still can't believe she is one!
So as it turned out awesome, I thought to chronicle some of the party ideas/planning.
Theme
Keeping it girly, I chose to do a pink and purple butterfly theme.
Logistics
Next nail down all the logistics...venue, day and time, and guest list.
For Rayna's, we went back and forth between community halls, parks or at the house. We decided on the house, BBQ with kids entertainment provided.
Invites
This time, I set down to create my own invites. You can purchase or do an evite. I chose to create mine using Canva. I printed a few and others I sent digitally as a picture or a pdf. Cute huh?
Decor and Items
Next I turned to my friend Google. I ordered most of the decorations, plates, napkins, candles, loot bags and more from Party City. So easy. I figured I will set this as the tone and get pink and purple balloons items also to complete the look. It worked out great and didn't break the bank in decor...thankfully.
I really wanted to have as much as pink and purple and butterflies all about. We did butterfly banners, and scene setters and cutouts on the walls, butterfly helium balloons and a lot of plain pink and purple balloons from Vancouver Balloons.
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| Sample of the decor, plates from Party City |
Menu
It's a kids birthday, so no need to go insane with complex food. We had tonnes of snacks, such as fresh fruit platter, veggies and dip, chips, samosas, popcorn, juice. For lunch we had food catered by South Hall, which was amazing. Our lunch menu had noodles, chicken, kebabs, baked chicken wings, pasta salad and a green salad. I should say our guests did also include a fair number of adults too.
Sweets
My favourite thing to plan is the cake/dessert table.
The super cute cake was made by Cake Therapy, matched the decor to a tee.
My Pink Whisk created super cute mini cupcakes adorned with pink and purple butterflies.
I found mini butterfly boxes and filled each with sweet popcorn. I also placed mason jars with pink and purple candies.
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| Butterfly cake by Cake Therapy |
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| Cupcakes by My Pink Whisk |
Lastly, I stayed up late making butterfly sugar cookies (the cookies were not tough, the decorating....yikes). All in all, it was perfect and so cute.
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| My attempt at making butterfly sugar cookies, royal icing is tougher than it looks! |
We had hired Par-T- Perfect and they handled all the entertainment and were the best! Kids enjoyed the bouncy castle, face painting and balloon artistry! All that and we also set up a cookie decorating station also. I think the kids had a blast and that's all we wanted.
Other Little Touches
I had a month to month board, that I made. I pasted each picture I took of her on her monthly birthday on a large canvas, so we could look at how she grew over the year.
We had a small digital frame around the cake table area, where I uploaded pictures through the past year of Rayna, some with us, some with Caiden, but really cute and pictures we loved.
We also had a large cardboard frame, so people could pose and have fun photo opps.
As the party wound down, I handed out the goodie bags. A butterfly bag filled with colourful butterfly noise makers, bubbles, play-do, fun straw, sunglasses, and a lollipop. I love picking items I know kids will enjoy and it seemed to be the case.
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| Rayna helping me assemble the goodie bags for her friends and family. |
I couldn't have had it gone better, I was so happy my vision for a cute girly but well enjoyed birthday was achieved.
Now it's done, but next year and coming years...I think we will just take them to the zoo and I will likely not bake again.
Check out the awesome vendors I had the pleasure of working with below. Also, if you want to discuss party planning...please contact me directly. In addition to writing services, I do the occasional event coordination and happy to help.
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| This girl enjoying being the centre of it all, what a great memory captured by Searching for Moments. |
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