This post may contain affiliate links. If you choose to make a purchase through these links, I earn a small commission at no cost to you. I do not promote anything I do not believe in or stand behind.
Our sweet baby boy recently turned one. It really is true what they say about the second child growing up faster than the first. When my family and I think back over the last year, we are amazed at how fast those 365 days went. It truly seems like yesterday our sweet boy entered this world. You better believe I am soaking up every minute of his baby days!
The first birthday is a special celebration. Besides being the first, it is a chance for family and friends to share stories & special moments from the first 12 months of the baby (whether it is the first, second or fourth). There is so much that happens during the first year, which makes it a worthwhile event to celebrate.
A first birthday party is a wonderful way to bring family, friends and important people in a baby’s life together. Planning a first birthday party does not need to be complicated! It should be fun and enjoyable because you are celebrating your sweet baby after all. Ultimately, the party is about celebrating your baby and bringing the important people in the baby’s life together. This is why I love planning birthday parties for my kids. I just love choosing a theme and planning out all the details to make the party extra special for my son or daughter.
Since our baby boy’s birthday is in January, I knew right away I wanted to plan a winter-themed first birthday party. Winter birthdays (a birthday during December, January and February) do limit the options for parties as far as location, but there are still so many fun ideas! Pinterest is filled with creative ideas for winter birthday parties when you are limited to the indoors due to weather. Since we live in Pennsylvania, the winter weather keeps us indoors more often. Thus, an indoor, winter-themed first birthday party is the perfect option for us!
How do I plan a first birthday party?
Pinterest! I searched Pinterest for first birthday party ideas and inspiration. I created a board and saved the specific winter birthday party ideas to it so I could quickly reference them as I worked through the planning process.
Asking friends for ideas or suggestions is another great way to get those creative juices flowing! Grab a cup of coffee together and talk about birthday party ideas. Just the simple act of talking about the ideas can help you make decisions and start a plan of action.
When I was searching Pinterest, I kept seeing ideas for a Winter ONEderland party theme. This idea really stuck out to me because walking in a winter wonderland sounds so magical to me. So, this theme was chosen and I loved the combination of white, silver, light blue and dark blue for the colors of the party.
Honestly, I could get lost in Pinterest for hours upon hours looking at ideas for a Winter ONEderland first birthday party. That’s when my handy-dandy brainstorming table created in Microsoft Word comes into play. Pretty much I do a brain dump and get all the fun ideas swirling around in my head written down. I use this to organize all of my ideas into the different sections of the party (decorations, food/drinks, desserts, party supplies, activities/entertainment, favors). I type everything out and print. Essentially, this becomes my running to-do list and a shopping list for the birthday party. Things can be added as I think of them and crossed off as they are accomplished.
I keep everything together in this reusable storage envelope. My brainstorming sheet, pictures of ideas (sometimes I print pictures for inspiration), RSVP list, receipts from purchases made for the party and recipes I will be using for the food go inside this envelope. I snap it closed and everything stays together!
Once I decided on the party theme and all the details, the first thing I did was go shopping for the party supplies, favor bags, and anything else needed for the decorations.
What food do I serve at a first birthday party?
When it comes to the food, think of your main entree, sides, snack items, drinks, desserts and sweet treats.
About one week before the party, we shopped for the food (minus the veggies and fruits). In order to keep our son’s first birthday party within our budget, I chose to prepare the food myself. Since it was a winter birthday party, I utilized crock pots and prepared two kinds of chili and macaroni & cheese (for the kids and adults like my husband who do not like chili) for the main entrees. One chili was for my vegetable loving friends (Pumpkin Chili with Beans) and the other was for my chicken lovers (White Bean Chicken Chili). There were corn muffins and taco dip with tortilla chips as the side dishes. A fruit platter, veggies with dip and cheese with crackers were the snack items. These snack items are my go to at every party because they please kids and adults alike. They are easy to prepare and you can customize the fruits, cheese and veggies to fit the preferences of your family and party guests.
Drinks were water bottles, juice boxes, Coke, Sprite and Iced Tea. I prefer to have coolers set up with individual containers of beverages. This is easier (and cheaper) to manage in my opinion!
The desserts included Powdered Donuts, Snowball Cookies, White Chocolate Iced Pretzels, Yogurt-Covered Pretzels and Marble Cupcakes. My goal with the dessert table was a spread of white desserts that resembled winter and snow. Cupcakes are my go to party dessert because they don’t involve cutting. They are easy for guests to grab and eat. I enjoy baking and decorating them! Plus, I get to display them on the table in the shape of a “1”. Using a cupcake display adds height to the dessert table.
When it comes to parties or entertaining groups of people in our home, my goal is to keep the food easy, simple and fun.
How do I decorate for a first birthday party?
One of the simplest ways to bring your party theme to life is creating themed signs for the food and desserts. I used PicMonkey to create winter-themed signs for everything. Then I chose to use white picture frames to display each sign.
Another large part of the party decorations for me are the tables. I think about the color I want to use for the tablecloths and the centerpieces/table scatter. For our winter first birthday party, I used light blue tablecloths. The centerpieces were the decorated favor bags, coffee filter snowflakes I made with my daughter and silver Hershey Kisses scattered about. I love using these items for more than two purposes. This not only decorated the tables, but minimized the cost of party decorations. The coffee filter snowflakes created a conversation piece during the party, too!
Something that I always set up at birthday parties or special celebrations is a photo display. I just love displaying pictures and making photo books with our pictures. I love taking pictures of our kids and doing seasonal photo shoots with them. It is neat to see how they change from season to season and year to year.
For our son’s first birthday party, I displayed several framed pictures of him in simple white frames that I repurpose in his bedroom.
To keep it easy and inexpensive, we printed the pictures at home using photo paper. We invested in a printer that was well reviewed when it came to picture quality. Between the signs I designed, favor tags, thank you cards and pictures I displayed at the party, there was a lot of printing involved for this party.
Balloons are a fun party decoration! They definitely add an element of fun to the party. For my daughter’s 2nd birthday party, there were sets of balloons at every table. I decided I didn’t want to put balloons at every table and wanted to only make a fun set to attach to our son’s high chair (he’s the star of the party, after all) and the dessert, photo display and gift tables. I did blow up balloons for our birthday photo shoot at home. These balloons were brought to the party and scattered about on the floor kid entertainment. They loved it!
What activities do you do at a first birthday party?
We had 19 kids attending our son’s first birthday party, ranging in age from 18 months to 10 years old. A good majority were toddlers (2-4 years old). Therefore, I wanted to include a craft and several activities to keep them entertained during the party.
Coloring and drawing is an inexpensive way to entertain kids (and adults) of all ages! There are plenty of free printable coloring pages on the Internet. I found several great winter-themed coloring pages, color-by-number pictures and tracing activities. Also, I designed my own coloring page in Microsoft Word using Word Art. It said, “Chase is ONE” and I added a few snowflakes scattered around.
Books are an easy way to entertain young kiddos! I simply brought our seasonal basket of winter books and scattered them about on one of the tables. There was always a parent and child reading a book together, which was fun to see!
My friend shared the idea of building snow forts out of toothpicks and mini marshmallows as an activity for the kids. This was such a great idea because the kids loved it, it was easy to set up and inexpensive! It encouraged creative thinking, promoted problem solving, and honed in on those fine motor skills by keeping those little hands busy. Plus, it was something different for the kids to do.
The craft I chose to set up for the party was building a snowman. Creating a snowman is a must do activity for a winter themed birthday party. I precut all the pieces for the activity and grouped them together in sandwich bags. This kept the activity more organized and there was less mess to clean up. Also, if the kids didn’t want to build the snowman right there at the party, the bag of supplies gave them the option to take home and make it! There were a few extras so some friends took another one home to make, which was okay with me!
Here are a few other ideas of birthday party activities for toddlers:
Put on some music and have a dance party break during the party. Toddlers love to move so putting on music is a perfect way for them to release energy. You can play music through a bluetooth speaker. Since this party was winter-themed, creating a playlist of songs about winter, snow and winter activities would be fun! Many of the songs from Frozen would be included on this playlist. We love using Amazon Prime Music to build playlists. We can stream an unlimited number of songs from a library of over a million! Plus, these songs are ad-free. We can listen to any song, anywhere. Grab your free 30 day trial for your next party by clicking the image below.
Play the Hokey Pokey. My daughter LOVES this song and it is perfect for toddlers because it focuses on following directions and teaching the difference between left and right.
Have the kids color and decorate birthday hats! Give each child a white birthday hat and let them go to town coloring the hat to wear during the birthday party. Put out some fun scented markers, winter stickers and watch them create colorful hats to wear.
Decorate a “Happy Birthday” sign. Cover a table in a large white tablecloth or kraft paper. Write “Happy Birthday _____ (Child’s Name)” and have the kids decorate the table by drawing pictures or adding stickers.
Games are another way to entertain kids and encourage togetherness at birthday parties. Plus, they are fun to play! You can find small games at the Dollar Store to set up or use a few favorites from your own stash. I would suggest choosing games with limited pieces so you don’t risk losing them.
Puzzles are another fun activity to include at birthday parties. They don’t require any set up and work well for a variety of ages. Puzzles are a great fine motor activity for toddlers, strengthen patience and provide kids with a huge sense of accomplishment when they’ve completed the puzzle. You can find a variety of character puzzles at the Dollar Store. There are Disney Princess, Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse ones at our local Dollar Tree.
During the party, there was never a dull moment. Some parents and kids were doing an activity, some were on the floor playing with the toys, some were eating/talking, some were coloring and some were reading books. The variety of activities and entertainment included at the party made everyone happy and there was never a moment of craziness, AKA kids running all over the place!
Birthday Party Invitations
Once you’ve selected your theme, it’s time to work on the invitations. I recommend sending out the invitations about 4 weeks (1 month) from the birthday party with an RSVP date one week before.
There are many options for invitations. You can design your own using the free version of PicMonkey or Canva. You can send an invitation via email or text message. Another option is creating an event on Facebook! This is a neat option because your party guests and you can post within the event. This is a great way for your guests to ask any questions or post important information you want your party guests to know. You can order your invitations from an online website such as Shutterfly, SnapFish, Amazon Prints, etc. You can also order invitations online and print at stores such as Target, Walgreens or Walmart. Etsy is another good place to search for invitations for birthday parties and support small business owners at the same time!
Who do you invite to a first birthday party?
When we were deciding how many invitations we needed to order for our son’s first birthday party, I went through our master address list, which we keep in a Google Sheet, and created a new column for the party. In this column, I marked a “1” in the row for each household receiving an invitation. We kept the guest list small and included our immediate family and our closest friends. The friends we invited were those who we spent time with during our son’s first year and those with whom we stayed in touch with on a regular basis. It can be hard to decide, but we were happy with the guest list for our son’s birthday party.
The first birthday party is ultimately for the parents so it is important to invite those who are closest and most important to the family. Think about grandparents, extended family, friends, neighbors, and possibly colleagues when building your guest list. Since it is only a first birthday party, there is no need to invite classmates from daycare. Now, when my daughter turned one, I did include our playdate moms and their children on the guest list because they played a significant role in her first year.
Other factors to consider when building your first birthday party guest list include the size of the party venue (or your house if you are hosting the party there) and your party budget.
It is ultimately up to you for the size of the first birthday party. Some like to keep it small and do close family and friends at the house while others prefer a big birthday bash! There is no right or wrong way to celebrate a first birthday. Just have fun and enjoy the celebration!
Birthday Party Favors
I enjoy giving a small gift to the guests at a party. Just something small as a thank you for joining in our celebration. For my son’s first birthday party, I decided to put together a gift bag for each of the kids attending the party.
I happened to visit Walmart after Christmas and noticed they had some snowflake lip gloss and cute snowmen and penguin straw cups on clearance. So I was able to buy enough for the kids at the party! The favor bags tied into our party theme of winter. That meant Frozen pencils, snowflake stickers, and Frozen snack crackers 😉❄⛄
Here are other items I like to include in favor bags:
- Stickers
- Self-Inking Stamps
- Small Notebook
- Pencils
- Crayons/Markers
- Small Coloring Books/Sticker Books/Activity Books
- Individual Bags of Snacks
- Fruit Snacks
- Fun Cups
I decorated plain white paper gift bags with snowflake stamps, filled them with the goodies and topped them off with light blue tissue paper. I personalized each bag by writing the kids’ names on them. When you are deciding on favors, I like to include things that the children will actually use. Kids love snacks and they love stickers, no matter what the age! I try to avoid candy when I can, but do like to include fruit snacks!
Gifts & Thank You Notes
There was a specific table set up for the gifts. We chose not to open gifts at the party itself. Rather, we opened them in the comfort of our home later that day.
As the gifts were opened, I recorded what was received by each guest on our RSVP Sheet. This makes writing thank you notes very easy!
The thank you notes were created using my son’s footprint. I painted his foot with white paint and pressed it to a piece of blue cardstock to create a picture of a footprint snowman. Once it was dry, I used markers to draw a hat, eyes, buttons, arms and a carrot nose. Then, I scanned the finished product into my computer, saving it as an image. Inside a Word document, I imported the image, sizing it to fit ¼ of the page, resulting in two thank you cards per sheet of paper. I printed the amount I needed onto white cardstock, cut each sheet in half and folded the cards.
My goal is to write and send thank you notes within two weeks of the party. However, sometimes it will take me longer, but I always make it my priority to write them as close to the conclusion of the party as I can. I don’t necessarily write them all in one sitting either. I do a few at a time, which works best with my schedule. Doing a few at a time is less overwhelming than writing all of them at one time.
After the birthday party, we used the decorations from the party to decorate our home for winter. The coffee filter snowflakes were hung on our windows using command hooks. Some of them I used to make a wreath for our front door.
We also displayed the birthday cards we received for our son’s birthday, attached the birthday balloons to his high chair until they started to lose air, and displayed the snowmen our daughter made at the party.
Conclusion
Planning a first birthday party for your child is an exciting time! It can be fun, enjoyable and EASY when you have a system for planning and organizing everything related to the party. I hope sharing my method for planning my son’s first birthday party gives you ideas for your own child’s first birthday party (or any age party for that matter)! Thank you for stopping by to read 😊