Two Saturday's ago we had Caroline's first birthday party. I kept repeating all day, "How has it been a year" and "Oh my goodness, Caroline is really ONE, we're having a party to prove it!" It was kinda silly since I had been planning for weeks and obviously knew it was coming. I just don't know where the last year has gone?
Anyway, I LOVE a good theme, and I knew that a Ladybug theme was perfect for our little Love Bug who has a spring birthday! Everything was ladybug and polka dot, and red, black, with some bright spring green. It was fun, and fairly easy to find cheap ways to stick with my theme using stuff I already owned.
First off, the invites:
I love invitations. If I could make a living just designing invitations for parties, I totally would. I just have a thing for fun fonts and mixing colors and patterns. Anyway, I am really happy with the way these turned out!
I framed an invite at the entry way for the party.
I found the cute wooden lady bugs at Micheals for .49 cents each and hot glued one to the big wooden"C", and tied it up to a hook with polka-dot ribbon. I loved how simple and subtle it was. I already had the red and white flowers from ikea and they worked perfect in a plain white pitcher.
I LOVE how my party wreath turned out so much it is staying up as a spring wreath. Ladybugs are spring right??? Anyway, I just covered a wreath form with burlap strips {that I already had!} using hot glue. I really like how the texture of the imperfect burlap looks!
Then I just made several flowers out of polka dot ribbon and scrap white and black fabric that was left over from curtains in a guest bedroom and random buttons. They are really simple... I made these flowers using scissors and a hot glue gun. I also made an extra red polka-dot flower that was easy to attach to elastic for a headband for the Birthday Girl!
I found the ladybug circle printable from this website here. I made additional circles that just said "Happy 1st Birthday Caroline" in the same font from her invites to alternate with the lady bugs.
I printed and cut out the different circles, and hot glued them to abstract "flowers" that I free hand cut out of polka-dot paper. I then hot glued the whole "flower" to a clothes pin to hang up Caroline's Monthly Bib Pictures Pictures {from my sweet friends at this shower} across the mantle and our ledge shelves. It was simple and fun to look back through at how much she has changed from a baby to a little girl in the last year!
My Mom found this cute lady bug frame at Hobby Lobby. It was perfect. We took Caroline's picture in her 1st Birthday shirt and red homemade tulle tutu the day before the party so I had some pictures already printed out for the party. I found her lady bug shirt from this Etsy Shop.
I made these simple water bottle lady bug wraps that said "happy 1st birthday caroline" and printed them on sheets of 8x11 label paper. I then cut apart the strips and had 6 water bottle wraps per sheet. I love details and these were a favorite detail for sure!
I painted a few different flower pots in bright green and red to hold straws and others for the utensils. I already had these chalk board labels that I tied on with bakers twine. Easy!
In sticking with our red and black theme, we had bottled cokes! Such fun and a big hit. We also {of course} had Chick-fil-A tea and lemonade too.
We were lucky to have a beautiful spring day. I was praying hard for this because we had been itching to grill out hamburgers after a very long and very cold winter. It was the perfect day for an early spring cook-out. We kept it pretty simple with burgers, chips, fruit, guacamole, and then cupcakes, chocolate covered pretzels and Lady Bug Oreos.
The cupcakes were vanilla cake with cream cheese icing, and I sprinkled mini chocolate chips on top. Once again, easy!
The lady bug oreos were a big hit too and very simple. I used red melts from Micheal's to dip oreos. I then just used a black M&M and more mini chips and black icing for make the lady bug on top. I left them in the fridge to get hard overnight. They were super sweet, but very yummy!
It was such a fun afternoon celebrating our girl. I am big on the party details because thats fun in a weird way to me, but Caroline actually really seemed to enjoy having so many people over to "party" with her, and that was the best part!
Pictures of the birthday girl coming next!
