Up, Up, and Away First Birthday Party

The year seemed to fly by and I wanted to keep the party pretty simple, so we just did a balloon party.  The balloon had the party details when it was inflated.  And none of the words were all that special.

"This year blew by.

Come celebrate the adventure with us!"

The food table was just fajitas with all the fixings, nothing real special or creative.  The kids drinks had frozen water balloons in addition to the ice.  Several actually torn after froze I guess.  When I was putting them in the drink tub, the balloons were torn which kind of made a balloon mess when it all melted and we did not get to use the water balloons like in a perfect world.

The birthday boy had a little smash cake, but the rest of us had jello parfaits (yum). It was just blue jello cubed and layered with whipping cream.  I made the cream fresh because I was not sure how cool whip would work after it was not frozen for a while.

It was a very windy day so the favors did not work all that well.  They were supposed to look more like hot air balloon baskets than they actually did at the party.  Some of the balloons popped on the bricks and we actually had one of the baskets go missing to find it in a neighbor's yard the next day (haha).  The baskets included pencils with balloons on them, punch balloons, a globe pencil sharpener, and little lights which fit onto the fingers.  The lights were not a good idea.  I did not know how easily they come apart.  They are fun but any young kid will put them in their mouth and pieces would be missing.

Color with Me - a paint and crayon birthday party

My daughter could last for hours coloring anything with all kinds of colors so we celebrated that for her birthday. The invitation says:

There will be markers and crayons and gloss

and paint and chalk, and even a sponge toss.

We will be outside unless there's rain,

and please wear clothing that you can stain.

(for parents too if you like to play with the kiddos)

We put out tables with coloring sheets with the option of using crayons or colored pencils or markers. We stapled a long white sheet of paper to the fence to let the kids use finger paints or the painting dot markers to color. We also had long sheets of paper for the tables in case a kid wanted to make a mural of their own to take home :) We had out the color chalk bucket which gets used on all surfaces outside daily at our house. 

We had a sponge fight with colored water. We used the bath drop colors to color the water because I had read food coloring could stain. We had wax crayons with wet sponges and a mirror for face painting. There was also some hair chalk too but all of the kids who were able to make the party were too young for that. 

We had color bubbles if the kids wanted to blow bubbles.  Those are very messy which made them extra fun for some of the kids.. Even the water tables, which was the only water toys out, had colored water in them.

The food table had colored slushies on it. I used this recipe. I used only 1t of the coloring for the mint, coconut, strawberry and orange since I thought the 1-1/2t made those too strong. The bottles were titled in a slightly different way so it might be due to the pure vs artificial flavoring. 

The other food was just hotdogs with chips and veggie & fruit/cheese tray. There was also plenty of water because it gets hot here! For dessert, instead of the traditional cupcakes, we had Rice Krispie treats. I traded out a 1/3 of the Rice Krispies for Trix to add color. The kids sang happy birthday, then got to decorate their own treat with writing icing. It made for some messy treats and then some did not get eaten, but they had fun make the art.

The favors were all in different colored totes.  Each included crayons with coloring papers, colored glitter glue, a set of watercolors, and a bath color (either bath paint, bath crayons, or bath drops).  Hopefully it will all get used up by each kid.

The parents also got a favor.  They were told in the invitation to wear clothing that might stain, but since most of it was all washable, we gave them a chance to save the clothing.