Mya's 1st Birthday

   



      I love to entertain. Parties, dinners, small gatherings...I just love it all. I would always see stunningly beautiful decor or fabulous and fun ideas online, at friends weddings or on tv and the thing that I've learned over the years is that those types of parties really aren't out of your reach. With a little planning, organizing and creativity you can throw a fabulous party (without breaking the bank).

    

      My daughter Mya just turned one, so I decided she better have a fab party (really though, as my husband Terry said, "it's actually a party to celebrate the fact that we survived the first year of parenthood!"). So true. Anyways, I wanted it to be great and memorable, but with being on mat leave we didn't have tons of extra money to drop into a party. So I decided to start early (at least 2 months before the party) make all of the decorations myself, get my sister Val to make the other paper details (she's really crafty too) get some good deals along the way and bake up all of the food ahead of time and freeze it. Here are some pics of the final product.

    

I bought the Martha Stewart 1.5inch circle punch from Michaels craft store, and gathered all of my pink, brown or white designer paper and cut out a million little circles. I then glued them back to back onto a pretty long ribbon and I ended up with these long strands of pretty circles that hung in between each pompom. Oh, and the pink fabric that you see on the table is just a cheap cheap piece of fabric that I had cut at Lens Mills for her party (I think it was about $6 for it all..and it made the table all of a sudden coordinate with the pink theme--and saved me from having to buy what would have been a very expensive pink table cloth to cover the entire table).

Front door--pompoms were made from tissue paper from Dollarama. Just google 'Martha Stewart tissue paper pompoms' and you'll see step by step instructions..so easy to make and so pretty!

I just used my paper cutter to cut the paper to size, found a cute pic of giraffe online and blew it up, printed it and cut it out and used a fake gerber daisy that I had in my craft cupboard to add a little more detail.

I found these #1's at a shady little dollar store near my house. I decided to glue them to ribbon and turned them into this little garland of 1's!

I made this "Happy Birthday Mya" banner using another circle cutter that I have (it was from Michaels as well). It allows me to make larger circles which is great for crafty stuff like this! I just strung pretty ribbon between the letters and printed off this little giraffe that I found online and put it all together.

I just framed each pic of Mya with brown, white or pink paper and made the little signs above in 'Word' then glued everything to a long strip of coroplast (a strong plastic material that you can probably get if you walk into any sign business and ask for remnants). My dad owns his own sign business, so he always has lots on hand for me to use! 

My sister Val made these cute little signs for each treat on the table. It always looks nice if you do a solid colour behind a piece of designer paper like this one. Then just cut a little ribbon, fold it and glue it to the top. It's all about the details!

Use any old boxes you have, cover them in pretty wrapping paper that matches your colour scheme and use them to add different levels of height on your table. I also used doilies from Dollarama and twisted them into cones, taped them and then taped sticks to them and added a little ribbon as well. Instant treat holder!

I knew I wanted to make a giraffe cake for the party..and this is what I came up with! I also made her a little smash cake just for her to destroy (pictured below).

I made these cupcakes ahead of time, froze them, then iced them the day of the party. Val used her special cutter to make these cupcake holders and we used my 1.5inch Martha Stewart circle cutter again to make the giraffe and #1 cupcake toppers (then used Val's scalloped punch to add a little detail again).

I just made this sign on Word, then backed it with pretty paper that matched our colour scheme. 

These were made using a special square punch-but if you don't have one, you can just cut thick strips of paper (like the white and stripped paper shown here) and then go onto Word and just write out "Thanks for Coming" or any other message to your guests and it'll still look impressive.