Baby J. Tries on Her Birthday Outfit

As promised, I'm going to go into detail on the theme we chose for Baby J.'s first birthday party. We had a lot of themes to choose from. And at first, we really couldn't decide on what we wanted to do. At one point, we had thought of an Alice in Wonderland theme, but we decided that was too complex. We thought of maybe a more general book theme, since Baby J. loves books, but again, we felt it would be too all-over-the-place, and it really wouldn't be easy to find decorations for. So, we came up with an amalgam of themes. We combined two themes to create The Princess Monkey theme.

It sounds a little weird. Princess and monkey theme? We liked the idea of a monkey theme, but we also think of our little girl as a princess. So, we couldn't help but combine the two together. We got green streamer so we could put up what looks like jungle vines around the house. Then, we made paper cut-outs of monkeys to hang from the streamer. We're mostly getting pink balloons, and Baby J. will be wearing a pink tutu. I also designed a little monkey t-shirt for to wear; it says "1st Birthday" on it, and I got it made from cafepress.com. We bought her a little pink crown as well, but the likelihood of it staying on her head for more than five seconds is small; maybe we'll get lucky and snap a photo before she has a chance to take it off.

We decided not to go with cake, even though there are cake pans out there in the shape of monkeys. For the first birthday, we thought it would be much easier to go with cupcakes. The cupcakes will be chocolate with pink frosting, and we found monkey/jungle theme cupcake paper that wraps around each cupcake.

Since there will be other little ones there, we decided to make some favors. We made up some bags that contain a little monkey hand puppet and some other little toy jungle animals.

Continuing with the jungle side of the theme, I also made up a bunch of origami jungle animals, which I'm displaying around the house. These are easy to make; you can find directions for them online. For music, I found dozens of jungle or monkey related songs like "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", "Ape Man" by the Kinks (a personal favorite), "The Monkees Theme", and more. You'd be surprised how much good music is about monkeys or the jungle.

Also, I put together a digital slideshow comprised of thousands of photos from Baby J.'s birth right up to a couple days ago. We'll have this playing on a loop on our TV while guests are walking around and talking. It'll be fun for people to see all the photos of her growing up into being a one year old.

Overall, the party isn't costing much. We made a lot of things ourselves. The origami, the monkey cut-outs, making our own cupcakes and other food, the shirt that I designed myself, the simple party favors we found in a dollar bin, all of it boils down to big savings. If you have the time and the patience to plan it all out, you can save a bundle. You might even save yourself some time in the long run. At first, we tried finding a lot of things online, and it was near impossible. When you have an oddly specific theme like we had, it was easier to hunt and peck and find and make things than try and find a pre-wrapped package or something even close.

D.

Some ideas we've run across:

• Your cute and cuddly birthday themes: teddy bears, Winnie-the-Pooh, Care Bears, etc. These are extremely popular from what I can tell, and it's one of the ideas that crosses gender lines. Boys and girls love teddy bears, all the characters from Winnie-the-Pooh (my daughter has a favorite stuffed bear full of fluff that she loves to hug and kiss). What's great about themes like this is the abundance of material you can find in stores. When we were checking out birthday balloons, it seemed like every other one had a Care Bear or a Winnie-the-Pooh character on it.
• Your girly themes: Princesses are still all the rage. And pink, pink, pink! This is classic and easy to implement. You'll never have trouble finding pink paper plates, napkins and forks. Pink ribbon and pink streamers are abundant. Princess balloons are everywhere. It's also a cute theme. What father doesn't think of his daughter as a princess?
• Sesame Street: Your baby has probably had some introduction to Sesame Street already. Baby J. absolutely loves the Sesame Street songs. We purchased her a DVD of their most popular songs, and she loves it. There's something about watching "Monster in the Mirror" or "I'd Like to Visit the Moon" that completely captivates her. For the only time in her day, she becomes immobile, totally fixed on the music and the lyrics. Aside from that, Baby J. loves the Sesame Street books; my wife still had a few from when she was a kid that we read to Baby J. each evening. So if you're like us, your kid probably recognizes Sesame Street, and so it might be a fun theme for him or her.
• Animal Themes: There are your basic animal-related themes, like the rubber ducky themes. Get some rubber ducks and put them around the house, use yellow streamer, have a bubble blowing machine, the possibilities seem limitless. Or there's your farm animal theme. Your kid probably has a play barn. Baby J. obsesses over the cow and the lamb. She knew what a cow was before she could recognize the word "dog". All those farm animals are second nature to your child.
• Your Classic Boy Themes: Cars and trucks. Sports. This is another one of those themes where you won't have any trouble whatsoever finding any of the supplies you need. From birthday balloons with baseballs and footballs on them to toy cars and trucks, you won't have any trouble decorating your house. There are so many cake pans in the shapes of cars or sports equipment as well. I don't know how much your one year old will be into sports, but you have to keep in mind, the first birthday is probably more about you and your friends and family than your little one. He/she is there to enjoy the ride, not to be an active part of the planning.

I'll describe in greater detail what we chose as our theme in an additional post.

D.