HAPPY “BIRD”DAY

Posted on April 23, 2014

Derek had to talk me into having a first birthday party for Mya. Truth. I think I was initially hesitant because it seemed extravagant to ask friends/ family to honor a little human that won’t remember if they were there or not. But it didn’t take much to get my party ~~pants~~ hat on! Mya’s 1st Birthday was birdie themed– a “Bird”day party. (Theme was inspired by a Kikkerland birdie whistle that she’s had since 3 months old– which is now one of my all-time favorite baby gifts.)

Once the theme was decided, I started hoarding birdie images as inspiration:

[ 1. green bird, 2. bird mobile, 3. felt birdies, 4. wooden birdie, 5. onesie, 6. red birds ]… I may or may not have become slightly obsessed with birdies.

For the invites, we had a little photo session in the backyard to capture the below image. We had all the items for the photoshoot (Kickee Pants onesie, pink tutu, and blanket) except for the headband– that was a $10 Mudpie purchase. Totally worth it, though, because this Mama’s a sucker for her girl in huge hair accessories!

We created the invites in PowerPoint and printed them at Costco (just like our fam’s 2014 card.) Tip: when you save your final image, make sure you save as a PNG (not JPG!) I forgot this tiny, most important detail and had to reprint them because they came out fuzzy in JPG format. (But printing at Costco twice was still less expensive than printing at Shutterfly once!)

Since we invited a lot of peeps, I didn’t think it would be financially and physically (we don’t have a ton of seating!) feasible to serve a full meal, so we had the party was from 2:00 – 4:00– in between meal times. Sneaky sneaky. We only served sweets (which I’m sure all parents with young children really appreciated. Insert sarcastic emoticon here!)

Menu consisted of Snickerdoodles, Greek yogurt Pound Cake, Brownies, Chocolate and Vanilla Cake Balls, Low sugar + no butter Chocolate Cake (my fave!), Strawberry Angel Food Cake, Banana Bread, Marshmellows with candy dip. (I will be blogging these recipes in the near future!)

I wish I had some worthy decor pics… but alas her birthday was before our blogging days, so I have poor documentation– tsk tsk.

We already had some animal flashcards from Target’s $1 bin. They are double-sided cards, but we picked out all the feathered friends and pinned them on some existing potted branches on our stair landing… easy and inexpensive “Bird-day” flair!