For my daughter's first birthday we decided to do Winnie the Pooh.
I really wanted to keep the party focused on my 1-year old as much as possible (versus my 4-year old)! ***INVITATIONS***Actually I just bought Winnie the Pooh invites at Wal-Mart. ***DECORATIONS***We were having the party mostly in our garage, with food in the kitchen/dining area. Since we were having it in the garage, I really wanted to do my best to transform the garage so it wasn't so tacky. I had leftover yellow and baby teddy bear tablecloths from a baby shower. I hung those to cover some storage racks. I cleared the garage the best I could, but we still had 2 fish tanks on stands in there (empty), and a baby bassinet. I put some boards across the one fish tank and baby bassinet. I then covered that with a yellow table cloth. These were next to each other, and served as stands for me. We have big stuffed animal Pooh Bear, Tigger, Eyeore, and Piglet dolls. I have a picture I took of my daughter sitting amongst them when she was just a few days old. I also took a picture of her, sitting amongst them when she turned one! I framed both of those photos, and set those on top of the fish tank stand. (This worked out PERFECT because it put them up to a nice height!). I then set Tigger, Piglet, and Eyeore on the bassinet stand. I have a framed cross-stitch, that's Pooh-themed that has her birth-date, weight, height, etc. I had the Tigger-doll holding that. I set up the tables and chairs and put the teddy bear cloths on them. I had a smaller Eyeore doll that I put in the middle of one table I tied 3 helium yellow balloons to him. I have this little Tigger figurine that holds a photo I put a picture of my daughter in that, and used that as another centerpiece also tied 3 yellow helium balloons to that. I scrapbook, so I put some scrapbook paper onto some squares of corrugated-and taped pictures of my daughter from 1 month old-12 months old onto those. I propped this up behind my gift table. I just used yellow plates, cups, napkins, for the food. ***GAMES*** I had 2 games. I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to do this, because I wanted my 1-year old to be able to join the fun, but obviously wanted the older kids to be able to do something too. So-this is what I came up with! I had a bumble bee game. The little kids/toddlers-could just pluck a bumble bee off the honey pot. The big kids had to take a bumble bee and find its matching bee-hive. I covered a metal trash can with light blue cardstock paper, and then put a red tag on it saying HUNNY. I set that on its side on top of a box and piled some yellow fabric coming out of it(like honey). The fabric was just yellow shirts I got from the thrift shop! I propped up our big Pooh doll next to this. I made bumble bees out of cardstock. I cut out ovals from yellow cardstock and then cut out smaller ovals, in white(well, my white was the back side of patterned paper). I drew black stripes onto the yellow ovals. I took 2 of the smaller white ovals and taped them underneath the yellow oval. So there was a white wing on either side of the yellow body. I glued on black stingers(I just cut small black triangles), and 2 small google eyes. I had corrugated circles that I glued to the backs of each bumblebee(just to make it sturdier). If you want to do this, you can use cereal boxes to make the circles. Then I put a magnet on the back of each bee. I made bee hives out of water bottles. I spray painted the bottom portions of water bottles yellow. Once these dried I cut the bottom part off(maybe 3-4 up from the bottom). Then I made a handle using yellow pipecleaner(either glue to the sides, or punch holes and put it through the sides). On the bottom of EACH bumble-bee and each bee-hive, I put matching stickers. So, one bee and one bee-hive got a purple smiley face. One bee and hive got a yellow smiley face. One bee and hive got a light blue smiley face, etc. Okay, to PLAY. I put the bumble-bees on the honey pot(metal trash can). I hung the bee-hives on trees, bushes, etc outside. I asked the kids if they knew what Pooh's favorite food is? They yelled out HONEY!!! I said, YES! I told them that Pooh had spilled his honey pot and the bee's swarmed it! They each had to choose a bumble-bee and put the bee into its matching bee-hive so that Pooh could get his honey back! The older kids actually LOVED this! I gave them a pack of Winnie the Pooh crayons when they brought the bee-hive with its corresponding bee back to me! The next game was a carrot pull. The little kids could just pull a carrot. The bigger kids did a relay race type game. So, I made carrots out of scrapbook paper. I have books and books of scrapbook paper that have duplicates, so I took 2 sheets and rolled them into skinny cone shapes(with the WHITE side out). So, don't use double-sided paper if you do this! I stuffed them with some rumpled newspaper and using masking tape, taped the seam. I then tried to crumple the carrot up a little bit and I cut the top off so it was straight across. I put these out on newspapers on my garage floor and spray painted them orange. When they dried, I turned them over and spray painted the other side. Once these dried, they were actually kind of hard. I tried making these out of paper towel tubes, but that got hard for me to cut just right, and I didn't know how I was going to make it cone-shaped. So that's why I used the scrapbook paper. To make the green tassles, I cut 12 x 12 sheets of green cardstock into 3 rectangles(4 wide). I cut the top part of the rectangle into a slant. Then I cut the slanted part into strips(like fringe), and using scissors, carefully curled the fringe. Then I rolled it up, so that the fringe curled to the outside. So, you basically had a skinny stem, with fringe coming out. I stuffed this down into each carrot and hot glued the top part shut. I hope I explained this right. It didn't take a LOT of time to make these, took me longer to try to explain how! Okay, for the garden. I made 2 sides of fencing out of corrugated and made a corner of a fence. You could use two sections of white lattice and just put them together to make a corner. For the garden itself, I took 2-rectangles of corrugated about 8 x 60. I folded those in half to make an L-shape(30 on each side). Then I laid each L-shape together to make a square. So the square shape was 8 tall and 30 on each side. Then I took a square of corrugated(34 x 34) and laid across the top, using the square as a support. This square of corrugated had circles cut out of it, where the carrots could sit. So, the carrots were partly underground. I hope that makes sense! To PLAY I only had 5 children that were old enough to do the relay race so I just lined them up and they were on one team. I just had the first child run down and pull a carrot, and bring it back and put it into a basket then they tap the next kid's hand, and THAT kid runs down to pull a carrot and bring back, and so on. When they pulled ALL the carrots, then they all got a fruit snack. I wasn't sure how this game would go, because it wasn't really competitive it was more completing a task as a team. THEY LOVED IT! My one-year old liked playing with her bumble-bee and her carrot(until we had to take them away, because they became chew toys! ***FOOD*** I do snack food for the first birthday because I don't want the party to last forever. I had Piglets in a Blanket(hotdogs cut in half and wrapped in half a crescent roll, then baked). Winnie the Pooh's Honey Buns(pre-packaged, near the Little Debbie snacks). Tigger's Tail Mix(cheddar chex mix, mixed with cheese puffs). Fresh Veggies from Rabbits Garden(veggies lined up on a tray-I made them look like rows, so I had a row of carrots and rows of celery, grape tomatoes, broccoli and cauliflower). I also had vegetable dip. We had Eyeore's Rain Clouds(I saved the plastic cups from pre-made pudding snacks. I put a small amount of blue jello on the bottom, and let that set. Then I made blue jello fluff which is liquid blue jello mixed with coolwhip to set. I put some of that next. I then topped each cup with a dollop of whip cream, to look like a cloud.) I also made Owl Cookies. I got a recipe off the internet. I just had Hawaiian punch and 7-up, for the drink. I had little cards that a friend made up for me that had each character on it, along with the description of the food. I placed these next to the food. The adult's always get a kick out of this! ***CAKE*** My mom always helps me with this. We used a Wilton Winnie the Pooh cake pan to make a Winnie the Pooh cake. She also made a 9 x 13 cake and decorated that with a tree-and from the tree branch was a 3D cake(the one for my one-year old)-that was a bee-hive with bees on it. This looked very cute together! I got quite a few ideas from this website on the food especially! This website is so inspiring! I just love it.
