Handmade Party For Elie's First Birthday

For Elie's First Birthday party in December, I decided to keep things pretty simple. We were having a Pancake and Pajama Party. It was designed to fit between the nap schedules of little ones like Elie... plus, I can only take so many little ones in the house for so long! (Sorry, everyone, but I'm just not that into ALL kids!)

Lots of color combinations, just for fun

So, with all that in mind, and the fact that our house is small, we basically invited our friends that had children close to Elie's age... though there were several that were in the 6-7 year range because their parents are close to us and to Elie. We can't fit too many people, so the number of invitations weren't too many.... I decided to make them by hand, using craft tape and pen.

Handmade invites using craft tapes & pen

I made several prototypes to see what I liked best for the composition, after I decided on creating a festive bunting and keeping it simple. Then I drew out the string first, and then cut out the pennants after, affixing them one at a time, picking the color groups before-hand. I wanted each one to be different, since that made things more interesting for me. After that, all I had to do was layout the wording under the bunting and also the info on the inside. I did that on scrap paper and then did the final on a prototype card first.

Lots of tissue pompoms

I also made simple decorations of tissue paper pompoms, that my sister has done before (idea from Martha Stewart) and I purchased a strand of bunting from etsy, also. I made the sign for "One" myself out of scrapping paper. I hung that under the bunting. Simple, right? The only time I felt like I had gone crazy was when I ordered all the pink plastic-ware, matching paper plates, pink table cloth and napkins, etc, for the event. I probably didn't need to, but it made things easier for me later. (I kept the plastic table cloth & as much of the other things that I could for another party in the future. I prefer not to waste things that can be reused!)

"One" made from scrapping papers, bunting from etsy

Adults wore PJs, too!

Family & friends watch the kids play

I had loads of help making pancakes, bacon and sausage, and coffee for the adults. Orange juice and hot chocolate was laid out for the kids. We had three different syrups, fresh fruit, and powdered sugar... basically, anything you could possibly want to put on pancakes! Since we had one child with peanut allergies, we had to be careful of what mix we used, but after talking with her mom, we got the right one. There will pillows and blankets piled into the living room where the PJ'd kids all went wild romping and wrestling with each other. Elie watched and ran about the sidelines, excited just to have so many kids around her! It was a lot of fun for her... she wasn't overwhelmed by all the people, either. It was one of our fears for the day. She had so much fun and afterwards, napped like a champ!!

Elie gets her birthday pan"cake" with a touch of powdered sugar.