LO's first birthday party

Roxie5739 · April 2014

My LO will be 1 in 6+ weeks (eeeek!!!!). We are planning a small gathering at our house with friends and family, all in all 15 adults and around 9 kids/infants.

I don't know the etiquette for 1st birthdays and have some questions:

1. Do you have take home party bags when the kids are all so little. If so, what did you have in yours?

2. What activities did you have for the little kids to do?

3. What food did you have for the kids?

We are doing a safari theme so that decision is made! just don't know where to start with the other decisions.

TIA!!

kellyrn9956 · April 2014

1. No goodie bags for his first

2. We just had food and cake and gift opening. Honestly if we had done much more, I think he would have melted.

3. We did a brunch, so the kids and adults all ate the same. We had eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, fruit, etc.

TJ1979 · April 2014

1. Do you have take home party bags when the kids are all so little. If so, what did you have in yours?

Yes, we did take home bags. I just bought little colored paper bags and put in a book, bubbles, and a 4 pack of crayons. (We did a book theme birthday party, so the book was appropriate. I got everything from the dollar bin at target. If you have a party city, they have tons of safari stuff.)

2. What activities did you have for the little kids to do?

Since we did a book theme, I did a make-your-own-bookmark station. I had bookmarks, tassels to attach to them, stickers, and crayons to decorate them. Only like 2 of the older kids participated though.

3. What food did you have for the kids?

We had goldfish (in a fish bowl with a net as a serving spoon - that might be safari-ish), meatballs, mini ham sandwiches, deviled eggs, pigs in a blanket, fruit skewers, and chocolate chip cookies. But we mostly had older kids, E was the only baby. To go with the theme, I made little place cards for each food and labeled them silly things like 3 little pigs in a blanket, deviled green eggs and ham sandwiches, 1 fish 2 fish red fish goldfish, etc.

Can you believe LO is almost 1?!?! Where does the time go?

Ruthie04 · April 2014

Yay for a first birthday party!

1. We had a monster theme, so I had little take home bags with a cute, felt monster hat, stickers, a mini coloring book. We were fortunate in that the boys' bday is close to Halloween, so I got a lot of stuff on sale.

2. We had a make your own monster station. I found some foam face/hair stickers, googly eyes, blank foam faces and stick on Popsicle sticks at Michael's. It was actually a big hit. We also set out the boys' bday presents so everyone played with those too. With your theme, I imagine there are all kinda of animal games (pin the tail, bean toss into bins decorated like animals, coloring/stickers), so I think there are so many cute options for you!

3. Most of the kids were older, so we didn't have to worry about a lot of baby food. We had pasta salad, grape jelly meatballs, fruit platter, pumpkin cupcakes, caramel cream cheese apple dip. I feel like I'm forgetting something! I got one of those digital decor packages on Etsy and printed everything from there. I also made some sherbet/sprite punch and decorated things with googly eyes.

TJ1979 · April 2014

Ruthie04 said:

Yay for a first birthday party! 1. We had a monster theme, so I had little take home bags with a cute, felt monster hat, stickers, a mini coloring book. We were fortunate in that the boys' bday is close to Halloween, so I got a lot of stuff on sale. 2. We had a make your own monster station. I found some foam face/hair stickers, googly eyes, blank foam faces and stick on Popsicle sticks at Michael's. It was actually a big hit. We also set out the boys' bday presents so everyone played with those too. With your theme, I imagine there are all kinda of animal games (pin the tail, bean toss into bins decorated like animals, coloring/stickers), so I think there are so many cute options for you! 3. Most of the kids were older, so we didn't have to worry about a lot of baby food. We had pasta salad, grape jelly meatballs, fruit platter, pumpkin cupcakes, caramel cream cheese apple dip. I feel like I'm forgetting something! I got one of those digital decor packages on Etsy and printed everything from there. I also made some sherbet/sprite punch and decorated things with googly eyes.

OMG a little game where you throw bean bag frogs into a "pond" bucket would be so cute! You could use like a kiddie pool. You could even do little lily pads in it, and they get extra points for landing the frog on a lily pad! And pin the tail on the lion or hippo would be super cute! Oh this is the most adorable idea ever... I might steal it for E's 2nd bday!

pb_bride · April 2014

1. Originally, no. But then we went to our friend's son's 1st bday party and she gave every little kiddo a cute book, so I ended up doing the same. I found "How do Dinosaurs Play with Friends" books at Marshalls and bought them. WE love the "How do Dinosaurs" books anyway, and I thought the "play with friends" book really click well b/c all the babies at our party are M's usual play date friends.

2. No real activities. All the babies were the same age so they were happy enough to just play with M's toys. But as PP said, if you have a backyard and the weather is nice, a kiddie pool would be lots of fun!

3. At that age, the only thing I made for the babies was a fruit salad. Well, it was for the adults too but I know all kids love fruits. And cake of course.

JBDamonM · April 2014

We have LOs party this weekend.

I did not want to do a favor. I think they are just junk, and therefore a waste of money. However I have a lot of older kids coming and figured I would get the side eye, so we went with a package of rainbow chalk - for our rainbow theme.

I hired a face painter and bought two spin art machines. But again I have 12 kids coming, and LO was the youngest. If everyone was her age, I would not have done an activity.

Pigs in a blanket, fruit, chicken tenders and tater tots. My husband and I are currently battling because he also wants Mac and cheese. That's too much food in my opinion. And I really don't want to be spread to thin with too much cooking.

ccam · April 2014

I love all things party planning!!

1. I don't think goodie bags are a must, but we did do them. We had kids of all ages at DS's luau. Each kid got a pineapple shaped straw cup. In each cup, I put a small bag of goldfish, bag of fruit snacks and some temporary luau tattoos. Oh and each person received a lei when they walked in.

2. We had a bounce house. It pretty much occupied all of the kids for hours. Besides that, I put out a big bucket of balls, bats, etc. for them to play with. No other activities. (The party was in our backyard during the summer.)

3. I didn't really make kid specific food. We had pulled pork, salads, rice, etc. DH did grill up some hot dogs for the kids though. And we had juice boxes for them.

TJ1979 · April 2014

ccam said:

I love all things party planning!!

1. I don't think goodie bags are a must, but we did do them. We had kids of all ages at DS's luau. Each kid got a pineapple shaped straw cup. In each cup, I put a small bag of goldfish, bag of fruit snacks and some temporary luau tattoos. Oh and each person received a lei when they walked in.

2. We had a bounce house. It pretty much occupied all of the kids for hours. Besides that, I put out a big bucket of balls, bats, etc. for them to play with. No other activities. (The party was in our backyard during the summer.)

3. I didn't really make kid specific food. We had pulled pork, salads, rice, etc. DH did grill up some hot dogs for the kids though. And we had juice boxes for them.

Kid friendly snacks in the goodie bags is a great idea. That's much better than junk that will never get used or will get played with once and tossed. Making a mental note!

mnj05 · April 2014

1. We didn't do goodie bags. We had pretty much just family show up and not even that many so it would've been a total waste of money had I done them.

2. We had three kids come, a 4, 3, and 1.5 year old. They just ran around and played with each other, although DH's cousin decided they wouldn't be able to handle H getting/opening gifts and not them so she brought gifts for the kids to open while H did his. (A whole other story that ends with me severely pissed off.)

3. All we had was fruit and a cupcake bar since it was mid-afternoon and the kids ate that. The 4 and 3 year old had a blast with the cupcake bar.

TJ1979 · April 2014

@mnj05‌ I'm sorry, that is ridiculous. The kids will have to learn at some point. What, are they going to get gifts for every kid in their classes' bdays?

Roxie5739 · April 2014

Thanks for the suggestions. now I am a no on the goodie bags but thinking a pool could be fun, either water or balls. I'm a "keep it simple, stupid" kind of gal so the less work the better.

mnj05 · April 2014

@TJ1979 - I totally agree and it was all my dad could do to keep his mouth closed.

srveatch · April 2014

We did not do goodie bags but we only had three kids attend. There were a lot of doting adults there. We did spaghetti, presents and cake, no theme. MIL made a cake with her favorite fruit on it. We had vinyl rolled out on the floor and let her cake smash in front of everyone. She loved the attention

she was so tired by the end, activities would have been out of the question for her.

Eve_Angelique · April 2014

1. Do you have take home party bags when the kids are all so little. If so, what did you have in yours? We had a camping theme for the party so I had ordered rubber ducks that were camping themed along with a couple other little camping type things from oriental trading, but they didn't come in time, so in the end nothing.

2. What activities did you have for the little kids to do? With the camping theme we had a fire pit set up in the backyard along with a s'mores bar, so lots of kids had fun making their own s'mores. They also just played outside with each other, I think we had badminton set up as well.

3. What food did you have for the kids? Camping theme lent itself well to having hot dogs and burgers, so it was a pretty kid friendly meal. Also had fruits and veggies and chips.

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