E.claire's 1st birthday party

My daughter had her one year birthday party recently and I wanted to share all of the decorating and ideas with you. I had so much fun planning her party and started about a month in advance.  The first thing I made was this banner for her over the fireplace.  I was lucky enough to find pretty scrap book paper at the fabric store on sale for .25cents each. I bought 8 sheets of paper and cut out a triangle on the first one and then used that as a template to trace and cut out the other 7 triangles.  I used some left over gray craft paint to paint the letter's of her name on each one.  After it dried I took it to the Fed Ex store to have each piece laminated.  Laminating is much more expensive than I would have guessed. It was $4 per sheet and I needed 4 sheets total.  I was happy though that the laminating turned out well and it can be cherished for a while.  When I got home I put two holes on either side of the top and looped some pink ribbon I already owned through each one.  Then I simply tied it to the nails already in my fireplace mantel.

The next thing I made were tissue pom poms for above the dining room table and one for above the fireplace.  The tissue was between $1.50 and $2 for a pack of 10 sheets. I bought most of the packs of tissue at the Hallmark store and a few packs from Target.  I used a tutorial from the Martha Stewart website on how to make them. It was really easy.  I hung them up with ribbon and push pins.

Since my daughter had not yet eaten eggs at this point, I made Vegan white cupcakes with butter cream frosting for the guests. I also made her smash cake from the Vegan recipe.

Here is the spread. It included home made Eclairs (we affectionately call our daughter E.Claire since her first name starts with an E. and her middle name is Claire,) fruit, croissants, mini-donut holes, a toddler mix of cheerios, raisins, and rice puffs, and her smash cake in the middle of the table.

I made flower confetti for the table with left over scrap paper from my banner project.  I just drew a bunch of flowers and cut them out.  For some detail I put a drop of glitter glue in the middle of each one.

Here is her two-tiered smash cake (there's actually a third layer at the top.) The home made eclairs on the right and toddler parfait in the middle back.

We served our guests fresh squeezed orange juice in this glass container. We also had coffee and tea for the grown ups.

For party favors I found tea light holders at Michaels in a set of 16 and bought 3 bundles of flowers from the farmer's market. We used rocks we already had in our shed to fill them up.  I placed the flowers around the smash cake and each family took one home.  The kids got lollipops that I painted the letter "E" on.

And here is the birthday girl herself with her wonderful Daddy. Her hair bow was made using an old clip, 3 cut out flowers and some hot glue.

Happy First Birthday E.claire!