Seeking Creative Ideas for Daughter's 1St Birthday

Hey Mama

We have done a Rubber Ducky theme where we set up a table with bath salts and jars/containers from the container store for people to make their own. Also, Duck, Duck, Goose adult style. We have a brown bag with cards saying duck and one goose. The person who pulls out the goose card had to pick a card which had a list of questions for the person to answer.

www.jenniferzaranis.com

I'm reading some of my past e-mails, so I may be repeating what someone elce said earilier. But...
Basicly, this is a party for you at this stage of the game.
Keep it simple, especially in these hard times. It's not a contest. I know plenty of people that don't even do more than a simple dinner with family (we did that too). Sometimes we have been to birthdays whare the parents were so cought up with showing the world that they could provide, that the birthday party for their 3 year old must have cost a couple of thousand $$. Give it up! The way I look at this is, if you feel guilty that you don't spend the day with your child and need to indulge them (at this age they don't even realize it anyway). Go ahead-do what ever you need to do to make your self feel better, just realize as the child grows bigger, so does the party!
It's at this point you need to look at this and ask...
Who is this party for? Give him a "real party" when he turns 3. Invite friends, send out invites, do the schepele at that point. Don't stress your self out right now. Have your family over, maybe a close friend or two, have dinner, some wine, some cake, open gifts and baby won't even know whats going on. Just take pic and be happy that he's healthy and your amunst family and friends.

pass the parcel.

get a gift just a cheap one that another child at the party would enjoy. ( i got a cheap puzzel from wall mart)

wrap it up in birthday paper.

now take 5 sheets of individual news paper and wrap it up 5 seperate time taking care to not have the seams all on the same side. (alternate seam sides)

-get the guests to sit in a circle on the floor.
-have some music playing.
-start passing the parcel around the circle (like it was a hot potato)
-stop the music (like musical chairs), who ever is holding it has to un wrap 1 layer of news paper.
- start the music again. start passing it around the circle again.
-repeat this untill you come to the gift wrapd layer. the person who is holding this layer when the music stops unwraps it and has won the prize.

this sound like a lot but it is fun for all ages and is a good party prize and is fast and better than musical chairs.

well since you're a first time mom, i can understand you wanting to go all out for your little angel! my suggestion is go to chuck e cheese, because she's not going to know what's going on anyway, you'll be spending money for everybody else. i feel like i'm a first time mom again myself, i have a 17 year old son and started over and now i have an 11 month old little girl who'll be at chuck e cheese next month because i'm not feeding the family and doing anything big for show. save your money sista, do something small and inexpensive but enjoy yourself - congrats to you on your little angel :o)

I didn't really do games or a theme for my kids' first b-days, it was mostly just all of the kids (older ones too) playing with all of their neighborhood friends, BBQ or something similar for the grown-ups, gifts, cake and ice-cream. However, the cakes I made for them were a little bit special. I wrote about this on here before, but in case you didn't see it, here's what I did.

I baked a regular cake for everyone except right before I poured it into the pans, I dipped out a little bit of batter (not enough to change the general size of the cake) and filled two cleaned tuna fish cans about 1/3 full each and baked them along with my regular 8" round cake pans. Then you check the little ones earlier and pull them out when they are ready. You layer and frost both the big and little cakes as usual and the little one is only for the special birthday boy/girl. I now do this for all kid birthdays. Having their own little cake makes them feel extra special.

Have fun with it...pretty soon she'll be letting you know EXACTLY what she wants, so use this opportunity to get the birthday creativity out of your system..lol! :)

Find some paint with water books tear out some pages for the kids and let them loose with some wet q-tips. Just be sure that you have some adult supervisions so that they aren't sticking them in their ears or noses etc. This is a great craft because there is NO mess and you can leave it out for them to do whenever they like.

For my son's 1st, I had a little table set with little squares of paper on it for people to write little notes to my son-- either about their hopes for his future, his next year, or about their experiences with him in the past year. My plan is to make a little scrapbook of his first b-day or first year (I haven't gotten to it yet...) the letters were great.

I hope you have a great time!

I have always done a bug/flower theme for my girls' 1st birthdays. I have the 3rd one turning 1 in Feb and will make her a butterfly cake. I used my Pampered Chef batter bowl to make the baby their own cake(1/2 the batter and cupcakes from the rest) The older 2 got a ladybug and a bumble bee. I use fruit to color cool whip mixed with whipped icing. I also used blueberries to dot and stripe the bugs. I let them go at it and they seemed to really enjoy it.
I have never had games as I provide lunch and this takes awhile and most of the adults would rather talk and the kids just like to play.

Hi! For my daughters 1 year birthday I printed/posted pictures of her doing her "milestones" - her first smile, her first roll over, etc and then had a contest where the guests guessed how many months old she was when she did it. It was surprisingly hard and fun. I also had people write down their favorite memories of her first year of life, and then put them in a jar for her to keep.