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Hey Y’all!  I’m sure there will be another, more sappy, post coming about how my little girl is growing up, because she is… sniffle.

But before I get there, can we just talk about how much planning goes into a first birthday party?!

I mean, seriously, I called my Mom and said… when did I stop planning a birthday and start planning a wedding?!?! Honestly, that’s how it felt the whole time!
In this age of Pinterest and constant social media news feeds, it is SO HARD to not go overboard planning these parties.  Every little thing you don’t do gives you a case of “mom guilt.”  Like, will she see pictures of this someday and say “Hey, Mom, how come I didn’t have a live tiger at my party like Jane did?”

Ok, that might be a bit of a stretch, but really, it’s hard to not want to do everything under the sun.

So, at some point, you have to either find cheaper ways to get a bigger impact or suck it up and get a loan to pay off the party expenses.  I went with the first one.  I did everything I could to make things myself and keep the costs down.  I thought it might be helpful to share a few of the tricks I used to make her party super cute without overspending.  And then I also just wanted to gush about the things I did splurge on that were super adorable!

We hosted a Luau for my little lady’s birthday.  She is a mid-July baby so it is HOT in Atlanta and luaus are a good fit for tropic-like heat.  I hosted her party at our lake house.  Here’s the thing… if you’ve never really planned an event with kids before (which was me), you really have to think about what the kids will do for the whole duration of the party.  We had 16 kids at this party, so the lake was perfect entertainment for at least half the party’s timeframe… that was a huge win.  It also let the adults stay cool for a while… which was a double win.

My first piece of advice if you try to keep a lid on the budget: Use the Dollar Store for everything you can.  Not Dollar General, but Dollar Tree.  This matters. The Dollar Tree is literally a gold mine for party supplies and it is all One. Dollar.  Be still my heart!

A list of general items that you can get there cheaper than anywhere else:

• Plates, plastic cutlery, cups
• Plastic table coverings (we were outside with a lot of kids so theses were very necessary)
• Tissue paper garlands and poms
• Favors for the kiddos
• Streamers
• Plastic Serving Bowls and Platters (used beach pails for chips and/or pretzels and I bought those here too)

You can often get all of those items in theme-specific colors or designs.  Since a Luau was in season, I had, probably, five different designs of tablecloths, plates, etc, I could choose from.  Real talk: I loved some of the more expensive plates and cups I saw at other places.  I had to really think about whether or not that was ultimately something I wanted to spend more money on.  I firmly believe that no one will ever remember what the plate they ate off of looks like, so I went with the cheaper option on all of that stuff.  If you want the fancier ones, by all means, go to Party City or look online at Amazon.  They have some seriously cute options!  But I’d suggest deciding early where you want your splurge money to go.  For me, I wanted everyone to eat and drink well… Everything else I could find cheaper alternatives for.

Décor

On to the fun stuff!! I scoured the internet for ideas, but here, again, a disclaimer: you have to be careful because you will want to do and buy every little thing you see.  Save things you like early and then go back and whittle down to what you really have time for or love.  You just can’t do it all and that’s ok!

Here are the crafty décor options I picked and loved:

Lighting

I wanted festive lighting and I kept seeing all these adorable pineapple and flamingo string lights in the stores.  The problem was that the wall I was stringing them on was 25 feet long and by the time I bought enough strings to fit, it was more than I wanted to spend.  So after doing some searching online, I came across these fun Lei Lights!

What you need:

Floral Leis (I bought mine at Dollar Tree, but here are similar ones from Amazon).

String Lights (I stole these from my Christmas Décor stash, but they are exactly like these)

How to:

• Cut the string that holds your Lei together.
• Peel off one of the flowers (Mine came with two or three flowers between each plastic divider so I put both on one light, but you could get even more bang for your buck by separating them and just putting one flower on each light)
• Fold the flower in half and, with scissors, put a small cut in the center of the flowers.
• Open them up and push one of your lights through the cut in the flower.
• Keep going until all of your lights have flowers on them.  And there ya go!  It’s a time-consuming process, but super easy.  Great for your favorite Netflix binge night!

Finished product:

 Centerpieces

I enlisted the help of my wonderfully patient sister-in-law for this project.  It turns out this was more time-consuming than I had thought it was going to be.  But, we had some wine (who doesn’t want a glass of wine while you craft?!), our husbands chatted with us, and before long we were done!  These pineapple centerpieces were adorable and doubled as food for our remaining guests after the party was over!

What you need:

One whole, fresh pineapple for each table you have

Option 1: Martha Stewart Multi-Purpose Satin Acrylic Craft Paint in a color that matches your theme

Foam Paint Brushes (At least 2, one small one and one medium-sized.  I only had a medium one and realized it would have been much easier with both sizes)

Option 2: Spray Paint in colors that match your theme

Process:

So, we did this two different ways.  One was definitely easier than the other, but they come out looking different.  I’ll give you both options and the pros and cons of each.

Option 1:

• Layout some cardboard in your workspace and place your pineapple on top.
• Cut a slit and a hole about the size of your pineapple crown in sheet of paper.  Slide the crown through the slit and into the hole so that the fruit portion is covered by the paper.  This will prevent splashes of pain ending up all over the pineapple.
• Squirt a small pool of paint on your cardboard and start painting the pineapple stalks.
• Use the smaller brush to get down into the layers and the bigger one to finish the long portions of the leaves.
• Let dry and put a second coat on.  (We did about 3-4 layers because we kept seeing areas we wanted to fix.  If you are less crazy than we are, you could probably be done after two paints)

This option leaves you a “rustic” looking pineapple.  The paint covers very well, but there will be some areas where you will still see a hint of leaf showing through.  We noticed this a lot more with a pink color than we did with a green color so it may differ based on the color you are using.  There are an amazing amount of paint color options so you should have no problem finding a color that works with your theme colors.  It takes a good amount of time to get these done… more than we had anticipated.  Which left us brainstorming a faster solution…

Option 2:  On a whim I decided to try spray paint.  I had gold paint sitting in our garage that we had used for something in the nursery and figured it was worth a shot.

• You will need to go outside for this.
• Lay some newspaper down unless you don’t care about getting paint on your lawn.
• Take your pineapple and put it in a plastic shopping bag.
• Tie the bag handles just under the pineapple crown, so that when you spray you won’t get paint on the base of your fruit.
• Place the fruit on the newspaper
• Shake your paint can and get spraying.
• Make sure you move the pineapple around and get in all the crevices of the leaves.  Let dry.  Done!

This option left us with a more “plastic” looking pineapple.  Super cute as well, just different from the painted ones.  It was much, much, MUCH faster.  It may be hard to find spray paint in the exact colors you want.  Start looking early so that you will know if you can go this route.

Finished products (pink is Option 1 and gold is Option 2):

One last décor item that I absolutely adored were these paper flower garlands!  They lasted through the party and until I took them down the next afternoon in Atlanta humidity and were gorgeous:

Finished product: (I’ll talk about those big paper flowers below)

 Favors

I didn’t want to be responsible for giving candy to the kiddos.   Instead, I left jars of candy on one of the tables so guests could help themselves.

These little stickers looked adorable on the bottom of Hershey kisses and then I used the remainders for Thank You Card envelopes:

For the kiddos, I filled coconut cups with a few fun luau-themed toys:

What you need:

Coconut Cups:  (Or Pineapples, or Beach Balls, or whatever kind of cup fits your theme). If this is an in-season party, I would highly recommend searching Dollar Tree.  I found these in brown and pink and bought the straws separately. $1 each.  If you can’t find them, the ones I linked below are exact replicas:

Filler Ideas:

Finished Product:

Baby’s Chair

And finally the Chair of Honor…

Since we weren’t home, I used her portable high chair.  This was a gift from my Mother-In-Law and I LOVE this chair.  It goes wherever you go, folds up and out easy (like so easy, I can do it with the baby in my arms), and has a nice carrying case with it as well.

I REALLY wanted a streamer wall!  I knew exactly what I wanted going into decorating.  What I hadn’t planned for was the heat and humidity.  When we initially tried to hang these, they kept wilting and falling down.  Fortunately, we had just bought an outdoor rug that came on a long, sturdy, cardboard tube and that came in very, very handy.  Any kind of sturdy tubing would work if you end up in the same position as me.

What you need:

Streamers (I used the two colors below and had two rolls of each)


Paper Flower Poms (I picked mine up at Party City, but the ones I linked below look like a pretty close option)

Process:

Option 1: If you don’t need the rod, you can tape or tack your streamers in place.

• Measure the distance you want the streamers to cover.
• Roll out your streamer the same distance and cut.
• Continue until you are out of streamer.
• Starting in the middle of the section of wall you are covering, tape or tack your streamers in a line down the wall, as close to each other as you can, alternating colors.
• Repeat on the other side until you have an even line of streamers.
• Using a push-pin or small nail, loop the string on your opened flower pom (directions will come with your pom) on each end of the streamer lines.
• If you have space and time, you can add several flowers across the line and cover the tacked ends of your streamers.

Option 2:

• Measure the length of the area you need the streamer to cover.
• Starting in the middle of your rod, loop a streamer over the rod and pull through until the streamer on both sides of the rod is the correct length.
• Cut the streamer.
• Place a small piece of rolled tape between streamer and rod to hold it in place.
• Continue on the left and right of the center piece, alternating colors.
• You can cut all your streamers first and just loop or cut as you go.
• I hung my rod on two small nails at the ends of the rod.
• Loop the string of your flower pom onto the same nail to cover the end of the rod.
• If you have time, you can add more flowers down the length of the rod to cover the bar.

Finished product:

She had a huge metallic pink “1” balloon on her chair, but it hadn’t arrived when I took this photo.  There is just something about those balloons that are so darn cute! They add a fun pop of something shiny to the area.  Here is a similar one:

Also, I ordered the high chair decoration from Etsy (Link to Etsy Here)  Note of warning… I love Etsy and enjoy ordering from real people who are super talented.  BUT make sure you order early enough.  I had lots of things sitting in my shopping bag for the party, but by the time I went to order, I didn’t have enough time to get them.  The store I ordered the high chair décor from was amazing.  I ordered late in the evening and they had it put together and in the mail for me the next day.  It was absolutely adorable and came with a cake topper which was another plus!

So these were my favorite parts of decorating her party.  I’m not kidding though, y’all, I seriously could have done way more, but my spending-conscious hubby and my ticking timeline kept me in check! And let’s be honest, all she really cared about were those first bites of cake!

Send me a message and let me know if you try any of these ideas, hit the like button below, or if you have any other ideas I can add to a future post for Momma’s who are looking for birthday crafts, send me a DM me on Instagram!

As always, Mommas, stay healthy as heck! KH