Sahar's Flower Garden First Birthday Party

Can't believe my little sugarplum turned 1! 

The party was in March and I'm JUST getting a chance to post about it. Better late than never right? Since she's a spring baby I wanted to incorporate that into the theme, in addition to finally being able to throw a girly party after having two boys! I felt what better way to be feminine while celebrating spring than a beautiful flower garden theme! 

I started the preps for this in January, because I knew my elaborate ideas would take a lot of time.  As usual, I tried to incorporate as much DIY as I could; with a homemade banner, cupcake toppers and multiple trips to Michael's. I also made all the backdrop paper flowers myself and if anyone is interested in tutorials, Youtube is the place to go! Send me a message and I can recommend the ones I found most useful.

I used my best planner friend, Pinterest, for cake table inspiration and I'm very happy with the result. I kept going back and forth if I should do all the work myself or hire a party planner. In the end I did use Bella Events who is located here in Tampa, Fl to set up all the decor for me. With a full time job and three kids I knew that I just wanted to hand that responsibility off to someone else. It was really wonderful having a Day of Coordinator to help everything run smoothly and I would definitely recommend it. Nearly all the decor  and desserts on the table were my own and the ideas for favor bags with a religious scripture for the magnet was mine as well. But having her execute it for me made a huge difference for my own peace of mind at the day of the party, when I had so much else to do. An added bonus is that she was wonderful to work with, which made it such an easy decision! The cake was done by a local baker Sonia from Sweeties Delights at a very reasonable price, it was true to the design I gave her and tasted delicious as well. 

We had a super cute flower fairy making station for the kids, but sadly I got no pictures of it! If you search Pinterest for fairy making you can find tons of great free printables. As you look through the pictures below I tried to include as many links as possible to where I got all the party decor. Hope this helps with your own party planning, for anything I missed feel free to reach out! 

Snapchat Filter via Etsy

FREE FLORAL ALPHABET BUNTING

Goodie bags and tablecover via Dollar Tree, Islamic Sign from Salaam Shop

Custom Magnets

First Birthday Poster ordered via Etsy, Flower photobooth frame made by me

macarons from Costco!

Cupcake toppers found here

Ikea lanterns and DIY vases

Customizable Snapchat filter, Free printable sign here

snapchat filter via Etsy

 

Tip: Have your balloon artist premake a bunch of balloons for kids to choose from to save time during the party, mine had to run to another event and was kind enough to bring about 20-25 along with her. I told her to choose the most popular shapes kids love and it worked!

Adam looking as legit as Mario can get

The following images were found from Google search and are not my own. I used them as part of table decor, favor tags and for sending out our Save the Date message. 

 

Full image here

The below coloring pages were found via Google Search and are not my own property.

Full image here

Baby Boy Shower decor!

Last weekend I helped plan a baby shower for a good friend who is expecting a boy. You would think we're starting our own boys club here since we now have about 10 boys and growing among our play group and just 4 girls!

I was in charge of decorations, games, and party favors. And if it isn't already evident here here and here that I love party planning, you can check out below some small simple ideas I used to make the shower fun! I absolutely love Pinterest, because I can always find some sort of free printable page if not great inspirational ideas to work off.

Firstly, for decorations I had the photobooth props leftover from my Valentine's party last February and figured the mustaches and bow ties worked for a baby boy shower. I also found some adorable chalk print signs we used for the photo booth courtesy of The Phillips Family blog. Then I found a template for making a onesie banner, it was perfect for the simple yet adorable look I was going for. Michael's was having a sale on their craft paper 6/$1 so I grabbed a bunch that went with our theme and put my scissors to work. I liked how on the original design they had used clothes pins to hang the onesies like hanging baby's clothes to dry. But, upon finding that clothes pins are ridiculously over priced and won't ever be used again I went with a simpler option: Punch holes through the onesies and thread the ribbon through. 

courtesy of BottleYourBrand Blog

Next were the party favors. I just could not decide what I wanted to do! In the end since I'm a huge chocolate fan and so are most of the girls who attended the shower; I indulged in our sweet tooth. I filled the favor bags with chocolate truffles and also made some baby shower themed chocolate candy using a Wilton melts template I had at home. Michael's also has a baby shower section where they had a bag of 'It's a boy' themed Hershey's kisses. I tried finding some cute baby themed favor tags for a reasonable price but the ones at the dollar store were cheap looking and Michael's was too over priced. So I made my own using extra paper I had got for the onesie banner. I love when I can recycle ideas! I found at Michael's the chalk print stickers on sale for just $.89, originally like $3! Then I added a few more cute baby boy themed bottle and rattle stickers to tie it all in to the theme.  

A pretty important part of baby showers are the games! To keep it fun without going too crazy we decided to play three games. 1) Design a Onesie 2) Guess Mommy's Answers 3) A-Z baby words. We had a lot of kids at the party and it just wasn't practical to play any relay race baby food feeding games and frankly none of us wanted to do that anyway! The first game was a fun arts and crafts activity that the kids helped with too. I had the girls decorate onesie templates I printed out using stickers, crayons, colored pencils and the extra patterned sheets I had gotten from Michael's. They wrote a small message to mommy and baby on the back so she could later add these to the baby's book and I had mommy be the judge for the Best Onesie Design which won a prize. While everyone was working on the first game I had mommy fill out her own answers for the second game. Even though the first game took more time, the other two were quick and fun to see what wacky words everyone came up with! For the Baby ABC's instead of matching mommy's words again, I gave everyone 1 minute 30 seconds and whoever had the most correct baby related words won.

via Poshtart Parties

     

via Google Search 'Baby Shower games'

Lastly, I decided no shower is complete without a diaper cake! Using unused diapers from my own shower cake earlier this year, some baby themed ribbon from the dollar store (way cheaper than Michael's and they even had 'it's a boy' ribbon) and a bag of rubber bands to roll up the diapers, it took me just one of Adam's naps to complete this cake! To decorate it I got a classic rattle and found some cutie booties and a teddy bear around the house. Diaper cakes are fairly simple to make, but just to be prepared I watched this video before I started.

Voila! 

our photo booth station

You know I love me some chalkboard!

It was a potluck so we ended up having a huge variety of some pretty delicious dishes!!