A Cute as a Button 1st Birthday

The 1^st Birthday of your first baby…so many emotions! I know all parents out there can remember those moments leading up to and of that big day! Our baby girl doesn’t get much face time on my blog as I like to keep her privacy in check for the most part – just my personal comfort level as a new mom. But my husband and I talked and we couldn’t help but at least give a debut and some proud parent photos of the big 1^st Birthday Party!! So this post is a split between birthday theme ideas intermixed with proud parent photos! I hope you enjoy both!

Birthday party themes these days are quite the hullabaloo and I personally love it! I love party planning and being able to be creative for a special purpose. We went back and forth on some different themes but landed on Cute as a Button theme! We felt it described her so well…we aren’t bias or anything! Wink wink! But I am also a tad button obsessed! I’ve always loved adding them as accents in my crafting and jewelry so it only seemed fitting! There are various elements of party planning – first comes the invitation in my book. The Cute as a Button theme wasn’t the easiest to find a coordinating invite to and I just wanted Shutterfly to take care of my printing needs instead of an Etsy pdf and printing myself. Learning from past mistakes of over committing my time and patience! So we landed on this adorable invite with this fun excited picture we captured of her! Plus, with no theme on the invite we left a big part of the party a surprise for the guests.

From here, we also loved the pastels so I kept that color palette going. As you will see as we go along – I am frugal and sentimental in my party planning décor! First, in the pastel theme I had some banners that my sister-in-law made for Autumn’s baby shower that were perfect for the party in various places. How fitting and free décor! So we used the big banner as you will see in our favorite big bay window highlighting her name as the star of the day!

And the other banner was cute lil doily shaped paper cut-outs in the perfect colors that we broke down into separate pieces. We then glued cut-out letters from another baby shower onto the top as the table runner to spell out her name and one in the center for the cake to stand upon.

Since I couldn’t find an invitation easily in the Cute as a Button theme, I wasn’t going to kill my time searching for plates and napkins with buttons – plus I thought if I did find they may not be cheap.
As long as everything was literally a button theme OR essentially as cute as a button…get it…I was happy!
And one day I walked into Michael’s craft store and spotted these beauties with the perfect coloring and snatched them up! The trays you see too were a last minute addition when I decided to feed our guests some appetizers in addition to cake so these trays were a perfect addition and table filler.

Some people it may bug that buttons aren’t a part of every aspect of the party – but as long as there is a thread of continuity throughout, for me I am good! My main thread was the color scheme which tied it all together just perfectly!

The last main crucial detail was the birthday cake of course! I called around to some bakeries with my ideas for a plain white cake with fondant button border and OH boy were they pricey! I know it is a labor intensive task to work with fondant but I couldn’t rationalize the pricing. A friend at my work who does cakes on the side gave me confidence to try fondant myself. So I bought a package of Wilton’s pastel 4 pack and used some YouTube to guide me. It ended up being so fun to create! It was a labor of love for me at this point and I felt so proud to have created the décor on the cake myself! I did buy the basic cake from Sam’s Club – my favorite store bought cake!! I know my limits and experimenting with fondant button creations was enough for me to NOT want to bake a cake and try to ice it perfectly smooth. No way – $14.99 was worth the lack of added stress!

Here is my end result the day of the party! I also got some letter cut-outs so I could spell out HAPPY 1^ST AUTUMN on the top.

Theme, invitations, color scheme, and cake…CHECK! With all the critical parts planned out – it was time to find the fun additional theme and Autumn related pizazz to add!

First was the button headband – this was the first thing I saw on Pinterest that got me excited about the button theme. The one I remember seeing was intense and beautiful but I knew my time was precious as a working mom so I had to be logical. So here you will see my quick step by step in photo form of how I took a basic floral headband and sprinkled in some buttons that Autumn helped me to choose to make this fun birthday button headband/crown! All you need to replicate this project is a headband, ribbon, hot glue and fun buttons! Oh and a cute baby to help you choose her favorites…I mean it was for her, I wanted her to love it!

Processed with Rookie Cam

All that process and silly girl did not even want to wear it. My own fault because I never put her in headbands – she was like “what is this foreign object on my head!” Above is the one picture we could get of her attempting to let us force it on her for one shot! Maybe in a few years she will appreciate it more! Don’t think I won’t be saving it.

Below is the quick photo montage of the button headband “how-to” – essentially taking a floral headband, cutting it down, attaching some ribbon to make it a tie headband and gluing on some fun buttons she helped me to choose! I like holding up options in front of her and seeing her choice so I begin to give her some creative freedom.

And the finished product on the big day!

We also saw a cute idea to decorate the high chair because of course that is the focal point of all the cake pictures so you want it to be like a queen’s throne. I landed a circular cut-out (almost like a button) with my custom graphic design work from Canva.com.

Click on this –> Cute as a Button <– for the free printable of this design for your own baby girl’s first birthday if you like this theme!
As you see we also added a little more pizazz with some lavender tulle gathered on either side with a fun lacey ribbon on top (aka: to hide the tape that holds the tulle onto the tray). Mommas gotta get creative in a hurry!

You can also see in the photo above but below is what was gracing the top of her chair – fun balloons! And more balloons you’ll notice all over the house – birthday equals balloons always!

We also decided to add some sangria! It was a late afternoon birthday and why not reward the adult guests with a light tasty pink sangria. Recipe HERE!
So since we were doing a yummy sangria, I had to make a cute beverage station to house it!

To get down to the details though…
The rustic A feature board was a quick craft room creation one day during naptime!

The “A” is painted in her room paint color with some fun splatter texture. I then just hot glued it to a piece of daddy’s barn wood and along with a beautiful flower embellishment from Michael’s! The buttons were of course necessary to go with the theme and voila! I might use it for her room later too!
Her little pom-pom ball flowers were an addition to her room décor recently that I wanted to add into the party scene for a pop of fun color!
And how fun are these button ring party favors for the ladies at the party! I used a little honey jar to house them on the beverage station and every lady got to choose their color upon arriving! Autumn and I got one too of course! This is all the ladies wearing them – even Autumn’s lil cute chubby hand!

The rest of the scene was the yummy peach-raspberry sangria with fresh strawberries for each glass…all of this atop my favorite Yao Cheng watercolor tea towel the hubby got me for my birthday!

I love our restored hoosier cabinet and all the quirky scenes it can house for our gatherings! Click HERE to see the restoration process.

Last but not least on the list of To Do’s was the monthly photograph banner from 1 month to 12 months! This was so special to make and hang up for the guests to see and will be a wonderful keepsake for momma and poppa as well! This does take some planning in terms of taking each monthly picture. Now I didn’t necessarily think a year ahead for this project. But about at the 10 month mark, I thought how I should totally make a banner with these pictures I tried so hard to get close to the time of her monthly birthdays!

It was an easy creation with a 12 piece (perfect amount) burlap banner from Michael’s, 1 of each photo, some hot glue, and buttons! I did have to cut the photos down a little on each to fit, but it was quick with my paper cutter and then the hot glue helped me to quickly secure each photo and some buttons onto each banner piece. We added some pizazz to the ends of the banner once we hung it with some fun color ribbon scraps. In the corner of this one picture you see her cute lil spring jacket which was a birthday present I was most excited about. Not a toy but surely cute!

And I think Autumn liked her sign…

Whew – I think that is it! Honestly, typing this all out and documenting it made me think how crazy I could have been to do it all!

But wait…it was for the most special little lady in our lives so it was all worth it! And if you begin about a month ahead and tinker away at it slowly…it istn’ so bad!