Gabriel's 1st Birthday!

Turning ONE Seuss style!

I'm going to do this blog in a couple of sections! The first blog I'm going to show some decor for the party! I had so much fun planning Gabe's birthday party. I was going back and forth between a few different themes including Dr. Seuss, Cowboys, and Elmo. I chose Dr. Seuss because we ALL know the first birthday party is really for US. Those cute little one year olds aren't going to remember ANYTHING!

I started by scouring stores for any Seuss items... ummmm nothing. So then I started spending hours at night looking on the internet. I found some cute ideas from various blogs and incorporated some of those ideas with some of my own. It took me a couple of months to organize my ideas and to purchase the items I wanted. Once I got started it was so fun and there are so many ideas out there for Dr. Seuss birthdays! I knew we were going to have a lot of little kids running around so I decided on kid friendly foods like PBJ sandwiches, turkey roll sandwiches, and croissant sandwiches. I also knew fruit would be a big hit so we did fruit skewers. Other food included mozzarella sticks, chips/dip, goldfish, pretzels, deviled eggs, ham/cream cheese rolls, chicken nuggets & macaroni and cheese. Of course all of these were labeled with Seuss names. We had a dessert table with apothecary jars, martini glasses, and margarita glasses filled with different kinds of candy, cupcakes, cake pops, and of course a birthday cake and smash cake for the guest of honor!

In our dining room we set-up the gift table and a couple of kids tables with various activities for the kids to do. I had printed off coloring pages from PBS.com, purchased a LORAX activitiy book and had a few books sitting out.

When guests first arrived we had a little "photo booth" set-up so guests could take pictures with a polaroid camera. I had a scrap book sitting on an adjacent table so guests could place their pictures on a scrapbook page and decorate it with stickers, their pictures, and a little note for Gabriel. I think this was a huge hit!

We also had a Dr. Seuss jump house that is, of course, always a huge hit with kids.

Overall, we had a blast!

Tomorrow I will post some pictures of Gabe and his cake!

Our courtyard set-up with tables and chairs.... I had so much fun making these centerpieces!!!

The centerpieces are just cardboard boxes wrapped (I added some soup cans so they didn't blow over) and the buckets were stuffed with styrofoam, shredded paper, rainbow swirl suckers, pinwheels, and faux flowers in the middle... There was so much more I wanted to do with them but my printer went kaput a couple of nights before the party! :-(

The dessert table... swedish fish (One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish), Our topsy turvy cake, Chewy sprees (Sally's sweets), cake pops (Thing 1 & Thing 2), smash cake, Happy Birthday cupcakes, M&M's (beezlenuts), gumballs that looked like seeds (Truffula seeds)...

The food table...
Various kinds of sandwiches (Who Roast-Beast)
PBJ sandwiches (sneetch treats)
Macaroni & Cheese (Cat's Mac & Cheese)
Chicken Nuggets (Nupboards Nuggets)
Fruit Skewers (Truffula Fruits)
Goldfish in a pitcher because I don't own a teapot (Fish in a Teapot)

Ham rollups & Deviled Eggs (Green Eggs & Ham)
Schlottz's Knots (pretzels)
Biggel Balls (mozzarella sticks... I was supposed to cut them in to tiny pieces, but ran out of time)

The entry table with sign asking people to sign the book with their picture from the photobooth

Entry table with items to decorate the scrapbook

Present table with activity tables

Noah and Gabriel wore these shirts...

MC helping me decorate! She was a HUGE help!!! Thank you so much!

The birthday banner that we made... We bought the template off of etsy.com and printed it and strung it on ribbon... It turned out great!

AND a few pictures of a few guests takin' pictures for our scrapbook... It turned out really cute!!! I guess I should have made the paper strips a little bigger!!!