It has been a few days since Liam’s first birthday and I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I have a toddler. Unbelievable. How did this happen? I know it is cliche, but it literally feels like yesterday that we brought him home. This whole parenthood thing is going by way too fast. Super fun. But too fast.
Anyway, let’s get to the point of this blog…the birthday party! I took planning Liam’s birthday party very seriously. Not only because it was his first party, but because I love to party plan and the only one in charge of everything was ME…I’m a bit of a control freak.
Before Liam was born, we had a series of onsies made for him. Each onsie had an owl with the message, “Look whoo’s (number) months!” And Liam’s nursery theme is owls, so it was only fitting that his birthday party would be owl themed as well.
With some assistance from Pinterest and the rest from my own brain, I got to crafting. I personally made everything from the invitations to (some) of the food. Take a look!
I designed these invitations myself. I’m not an InDesign user, so these were created in good old PowerPoint.
I wanted go get some guest participation so I thought a time capsule would be a great idea. I cut out owls, attached them to a string and added little bit of the outdoors into the craft by putting a few sticks in a rustic vase.
There are so many clothes that I loved putting Liam in when he was itsy bitsy, so I added a clothes line of some of my favorites. Luckily the place we rented had a gorgeous fireplace so it worked out perfectly!
Liam’s least favorite. outfit..socks.
We had an old frame that was just sitting in the basement so I took it apart, fixed the corner of the frame that was broken and made two boards from it. For the first board, I glued some yarn to the back of it and affixed Liam’s monthly pictures (in the owl onesies) with clothespins that were painted with his color scheme. For the second board, I took the backing of the frame, spray painted it with chalkboard paint and wrote all his stats (e.g. weight, height, number of teeth, etc). And voila! Two boards for less than $10.
I wanted something theme-ish for each table so I made some owls from felt to work as the weights for the balloons at each table. They were a hit! I made eight of them. They were a bit time consuming, but so worth it!
The cake table (and food tables, really) were complete with stuffed animals. For the cupcakes I made little cupcake toppers from toothpicks and completed the theme with ‘one’ and ‘owl’ shaped sandwiches.
And who doesn’t love gift bags? With a little construction paper, brown paper bags and some goodies to put inside, all the kids at the party took home an owl gift bag.
And here he is! My little peanut is officially a toddler. He had a blast at his party despite missing every single one of his naps that day. Such a trooper! 
Finding My ZaZu 