All this talk of birthday parties lately has got me thinking about my kiddos'. We have another first birthday and a third birthday coming up. I really love the Dr Seuss theme and I'm thinking I may do a repeat of it with a pink twist for Avalon's this year. I did Dr Seuss for my little man's first and went a little crazy with it. I actually had way more planned but it I didn't get to all of it. Boo. I saved all my decor and re-usable serve-ware etc because I knew there would be future Seuss related parties at some point. I had so much freakin' fun with this theme so I'm just doing a run through of what I did that year. I get most of my ideas from other blogs I've seen so hopefully mine will be of some inspiration to someone else as well.
Just starting things off with a little humor. Love this ;p
So here's the theme, "Oh The Places He'll Go". I kind of saw his first birthday as a beginning of sorts. We made it to the first year and are so excited to see what the many years to come bring us. What my little man will become and how his little personality will develop. I have a deep desire to raise my children in a way that they have as many experiences as they can. Play every sport there is, take every dance class available, go to every country and then some. Hopefully I'll be able to make those things happen for my sweeties :)
First off, here's the invitation. Yes, I am completely ridiculous ;p I thought it would be cool if the invites were a mini Dr Seuss book. I got some inspiration from some of my books on hand and wrote out a little poem. drew some Seuss characters, copied it onto cardstock and ran them through the sewing machine.
I tried to make it look like the theme book and my sad attempt at a caricature of Zander lol.
The Seussy Poem:
"One year ago we were blessed with a gift,
A new baby boy!!! What a gift! What a gift!
He's a cute little toot and he's sweeter than honey;
Wouldn't trade him for a thing, not even for money!"
"Some days he's good, some days he's bad,
Some days he only wants his dad.
And when he's quiet as a mouse,
I like to keep him in my house"
Oh me, oh my! Oh me, oh my!
How very fast the days go by!
We love each day, we love them all.
What happened?! Once he was so small!
Bump, bump, bump, We've seen him fall,
And stomp, stomp, stomp he's learned to crawl.
Now just this once he's turning one,
What fun!! The fun has just begun!"
"Now tell me, tell me, will you come?
Come join in all this fun that's fun?
For dear, oh dear, if you're not here,
You will miss out this year I fear.
NO! You could not would not want to miss
A celebration such as this!"
And my favorite scrap booking stamp of all time haha.
The first guest to arrive won a door prize. Bet you can't guess what that was lol.... a Dr Seuss book. It's been a while, but I think I put a note in the cover commemorating the event.
When the guests entered, I had a table set up with the cake, gifts, a piggy bank that said "college fund", and a big fish bowl and note cards for them to write a little keepsake note "my special wish for you is..." to put in his keepsake box for him to open when he gets older. I just love cheesy things like that. And I promise I haven't read any of them. That would spoil the surprise.
"One Fish
Two Fish
Leave a Wish
For Zander-Fish"
I used my wedding guest book pen, covered it in green floral tape and added some Suess style fluff...
The party hats nobody wore lol. I couldn't find any Seuss party stuff locally so I had to order online.
I found these on clearance and they match pretty well so I managed to save a bit on the paperware.
On to the food, I found this amazing Dr Seuss cookbook online here. Loved the ideas and presentation!
I tried making some of the items from the book. These were for "cheese trees". I painted little clay pots, stuffed them with foam and moss and floral stems and we put cheese balls on top sorta like topiaries I guess.
I bought dog food bowls and painted them to be "Ritzy Fritz Food" and "Ritzy Fred Food".
And my absolute favorite part the glass pitchers I painted "Moose Juice" and "Goose Juice" on. I saved these but they broke when we were moving. So sad :(
painted some dishes black and white...
This was for the green ham. It's actually cake boards.
I found these little photo holders on clearance post holiday. They were candy corns.
Here's the table spread...
Menu included:
Cheese Trees
Green Eggs and Ham (of course)
Gold Fish Crackers (in a fish bowl with a fish scoop)
Brown Barbaloot's Truffala Fruits (grapes)
Ritzy Fritz Food (mini pickles)
Ritzy Fred Food (mini wieners)
Shlott's Knotts (pretzels)
Daisy Head Maisy Burgers (mini burgers with daisy cheese cutouts on top)
and
Moose Juice and Goose Juice (hawaiian punch)
I actually had a child who kept asking their mom to get the recipe for the Moose Juice. Isn't that darling lol! That was a big hit with the kiddies.
Here's the cake and the smash cake
The fish and the tea pot spout and handle are rice krispie treats. Everything is homemade MM fondant.
The books on bottom are meant to be these two books. The birthday one of course
says "Zander" instead of "You".
I experimented with some flavors and this was my fave. It's called Spumoni.
Pistachio, cherry, and chocolate.
The smash cake was a green egg. He didn't eat it though, go figure. He must not like green eggs and ham, Sam I am... laugh.. ok...
But he did manage to get green icing on everything else...
Special ordered onesie to match the theme and one of his gifts was a copy of the book with a little message inside from Mommy and Daddy.
The favor bags. I used clear bags with white stars. Found these awesome mini Seuss books. Love!
And since this was a first birthday I didn't feel like we needed organized games so we did ball pits. He seriously played in that thing until he was so tired he could barely stand up. Although everything didn't' go as planned and there was so much more (yes more) I wanted to do lol, it was a great day. Very memorable. My biggest regret is that I didn't think to have a specific person designated to do photos so I really don't have hardly any :(
Not making that mistake again!
