Rose’s First Birthday Party

The idea to do a rose theme for Rose’s first birthday party was my idea. I take all the credit for that one.

It all started with these invitations.

Then I borrowed these gorgeous handmade table linens from a wonderful family from our church. So pretty!

The party was in my in-laws’ amazing backyard. This is also the backyard where Andy and I had our wedding reception ten years ago. It was very special to be able to celebrate our baby’s birthday in the same yard.

I tried to use the colors from the tablecloths when choosing roses for the centerpieces.

I had a few other fun ideas that turned out pretty cute. I knew I wanted to have each guest paint a picture of a rose so I could make a banner to go above Rose’s crib. We set up a table with note cards and paint sets and glass jars filled with water so the guests could paint.

The paintings dried on a clothesline made of teal blue twine.

The roses turned out so lovely! I knew our friends and family were artistic, but I did not know the banner would make Rose and me smile so much.

My girls went crazy making rolled paper roses when they saw me making them for the rose wreath. My six-year-old made about ten of them in five minutes. Because they loved making them so much, I decided to put the instructions on the craft table for guests to make roses after they were done painting. They work really well if you make them out of paper grocery bags. I learned how to make the rolled paper flower wreath from this tutorial, from JDC, which is the same technique I used for the handmade hair wreath on baby Rose.

I made Funfetti cupcakes for the kids, using my own cream cheese icing recipe because icing is the only thing the kids eat most of the time, and it has to taste good. I’ll post the recipe for the icing soon.

While the kids ate cupcakes, the adults ate tartlets.

Because I saved everything for the last minute, I neglected to bring the pastry bag to pipe the filling for the chocolate tartlets, which are supposed to look like this:

Instead, they looked like this.

Still tasted great.

And of course I forgot the papers to set the tartlets in, so I had them on napkins. Oh well! I’ll  post the recipe for these tartlets soon.

I made a banner using watercolor paper and paint and this tutorial, also from my friend Emily. It was so easy and fun to paint the banner by hand.

Now I have another decoration for Rose’s room–which is also Andy’s and my room.

Yes, she is holding scissors in this picture. I promise she only had them for a minute.

Planning a birthday party around the fall season, my first choices for party favors were school supplies that were on sale. I got these paint sets from Target for ninety-nine cents, and tied a half pack of note cards to each set using a pretty teal blue twine. I removed the cardboard that said Up & Up from the front of the paint set so it would look simpler. Sometimes when you have a lot of kids at a party you just have to get inexpensive party favors in order to stay within your budget. Each child took home a paint set with paintbrush, paper, and a Ring Pop. From what I hear, the paint sets lasted less than a week for the prolific painters, so next time I will probably splurge and get Crayola paints instead.

Overall, it was a special day for baby Rose. Noon was not a great time for photos, but it was a great time for swimming!

Oh, and just to stay with the painting theme, I hand-painted the thank-you cards with a very simple rose.

I hope this gives you some d.i.y. ideas to save you some money–and spark your natural creativity.