Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Popsicle Party: First Birthday!


As you saw in yesterday's post, we had a small family party for Harper's first birthday.

When daydreaming about her party (like, um, six months ago...), I knew I wanted to do something with lots of bright colors and patterns.  I wondered if it would be weird to have a "bright colors" themed party.  Not very catchy.  But by happy accident, I discovered pins about Popsicle Parties that looked so fun.  I could certainly do bright, fun colors with that theme!  And it was just fun to say.  Tony rolled his eyes but played along.

The great thing about this theme was that 1. it was easy 2. it was cheap 3. it was perfect for an outside, casual party.  Tony's parents were kind enough to let us use their house, complete with grassy lawn and pool! 


I started with the invites.  Using this pin as major inspiration (seriously, check out her invites - so cute!), I created them in my professional editing software - aka - PowerPoint.  Ha!  It's the worst, but I used it so much in my prior advertising job that I work best in it (and can't afford Photoshop).  Here's the template if you are interested (I used the font Xiomara, here free - love it!)  

I had them printed at Staples on cardstock and glued popsicle sticks (from the Dollar Store) inside with Mod Podge.  They held up nicely, but apparently the post office ate them and they all got kind of mangled.  So if you happen to go this route - have them hand stamped at the desk - that might help?



Since I only had a few to mail, I went crazy and printed envelopes.  I just used the Word doc template for envelopes and added a popsicle border I found online and typed out the addresses.  It was easy and I thought that was a nice extra touch.

I "borrowed" a bunch of paint chips from Home Depot for the decor.  To be fair, I've used a lot of their paint in my lifetime, so I think I have earned a few free chips.  The cards with four shades of color were PERFECT for the posicles!!  I loved how they looked.  I just free handed them and cut a bunch out.  Single color chips were used too.  All got popsicle sticks hot glued on the back.  I glued some to string to make little banners.


I made the happy birthday banner out of scrapbook paper layers.  It took a while, but what else am I going to do while watching Netflix shows every night??


I made a little banner for her highchair (she kicked it to pieces, but it was cute!)

I used a Shutterfly coupon to freely print out all of her weekly photos and strung them together as a little book.  Guests could browse through it and it will be a fun keepsake.


Our favors were pretty easy - a sheet of freeze pops tied up with a little homemade tag (I got all of the pops for the party at the Dollar Store).  I just made the favors for the kiddos.


I had prints of Harper's monthly photos together for comparison:


I went for color with the food stuffs.  We had lemonade and hotdogs and fruit and other outdoorsy foods.  I added a (washed) paint stirrer to a rectangular cake to make it a giant popsicle.


Outdoor eats


I used Harper's book bucket from her nursery to hold all of our popsicles (this was my inspiration!).  They were very cute.  They melted literally five seconds later.  Oh well!  The kids still ate some anyway!  Scissors were attached so no little hands made off with them.


If I had been feeling more adventurous, I would have made fancy adult fruit popsicles, but this was all I managed!

I made a few little decorations to dress up the fence to use as a backdrop for photos, with a few props available too:







And you might have noticed - my whole family surprised me and wore homemade popsicle shirts!  It was awesome!!  It was cracking me up.  Even Caitlin's new boyfriend wore one.  That's commitment, people!  My dad's was my fave.


There was glitter glue and rick rack. They were fantastic.


And finally, in my Googling, I discovered that a while ago, Gymboree had a Popsicle Party line.  I found a cute little shirt on eBay for Harper that had lots of pops on it!  It was very cute.  Birthday girl has to stick with the theme, right??



So there you have it!!  A casual, fun, easy and cheap, first birthday theme.  Harper had a great time and so did we!



4 comments:

  1. Adorable! I love it, Claire. The paint chips worked perfectly and your families' shirts were so cute. :)

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  2. This is such a great party! Love the theme, nice work, Mama! And your family is awesome. That new BF is a keeper.

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  3. So cute! What a fantastic Mama Harper has!! :)

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  4. I love this party so much! Those Popsicles from paint chips are too stinking cool!

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