Liam’s First Birthday: Party Animals

The fact that we have a toddler now is surreal. We felt like everything has been leading up to this milestone. We’ve been pinching ourselves a lot lately because we’re having so much fun watching this little human grow up. Where did our newborn go?? We celebrated our son’s first birthday with family. We poured so much energy into this party, it felt like we were planning our wedding all over again.

Isn’t your kid’s first birthday supposed to be for the parents to celebrate the fact they made it through the first year? We went the route of Party Animals. It matched with the theme of his room, so we already had a lot to work with.

Hosted in our apartment, we asked our family to come dressed in animal print or animal themed attire (although Papa and Grammy Tammy showed up in full costume – it was so cute). Liam was dressed as a safari explorer.

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Animal heads & honeycomb wall

The wall opposite our gallery wall is a giant blank canvas. We planned to set up a table of appetizers and desserts against this wall. The table on its own would have looked so sad if we didn’t utilize the wall space. To fill it up, I hung these adorable animal heads from Liam’s room and filled the rest in with these honeycomb shapes and balloons.

Grazing table

Fatima draped the table with a dotted tablecloth from H&M Home. It looked like animal print and worked so well. Aside from the cakes and cupcakes, we placed the spinach dip, fruit bowl, and my mom’s mini meatballs. Fatima put together a flower arrangement and monstera leaves at each end of the table. Looked like a jungle!

We used our kitchen island for the infused water (recipe below), black bean burger sliders and make-your-own blackened chicken/veggie tacos. I used the same seasoning sauce from the Cravings Cookbook and just swapped out fish for chicken. In addition to the street-style tortillas, we provided Boston lettuce to be used as wrap or bun for the sliders.

Infused Water: aka Jungle Juice

We had two types of infused water: grapefruit-pineapple-rosemary and peach-basil.

For the grapefruit-pineapple-rosemary water: I used 3 sliced and muddled grapefruit, a 1/2 cup muddled pineapple, and 3 sprigs of rosemary. For the peach-basil water: I used 4 ripe muddled peaches and 6 basil leaves. I filled up the drink dispensers with the fruit and water about 24 hours in advance so they could infuse.

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Cakes

I made two cakes: a chocolate fudge with vanilla frosting and vanilla with chocolate frosting. These were both made from boxed cake mixes using this hack to make them taste like they were made in a bakery. For the main cake, I topped it with DIY party animal cake toppers. For the second cake, I stuck rosemary on top to make it look like trees (too much like Christmas?). With the leftover batter from each cake, I made cupcakes and added them to the table.

DIY Party Animal Cake Toppers:

These cake toppers were so much easier to make than I thought. I bought these Schleich Animal Figures from Amazon and followed this tutorial for the hats.

Links to the animals we bought:

• Giraffe calf
• Zebra foal (the one we bought is no longer available, but here’s another)
• Elephant calf
• Lion cub
• Giant Tortoise

Party Favors

For my nieces and nephews, Fatima and I made these little party favor buckets. We bought the metal buckets from Party City and the wooden animals from Michaels. We had an elephant, a lion, a giraffe, and a zebra. Fatima filled them up with bubbles, animal crackers, candy, and little games. Everyone else got bags of animal crackers.

Photo Booth & Balloons

We wanted an instagrammable moment for the party. A place people could take pictures together, even grab Liam and snap a selfie. We threw together a photo booth using an H&M table cloth and a balloon. Something simple. We filled the rest of the space up with balloons; about 50 balloons filled our place. I mixed green, brown, and animal print.

Unfortunately, in the chaos of everything, I forgot to document the balloons! This is the only good photo of some of the balloons.

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Other Room Decor

The jungle safari touched everything from our couch pillows to our guest bathroom:

Classic Birthday Photo

My dad captured this sweet shot of the three of us when we were singing Happy Birthday. We just love it so much!

First Birthday Portraits

Look at my phone and you’ll find 5,000+ photos of me, Fatima and Liam over the past year. For his birthday, I wanted to capture headshots of our now toddler and capture this milestone and the theme of his party. He had a cold over the weekend, but he pushed through and gave us some adorable looks. How do I cash in on this little model??

The Swatch

Every event needs a swatch to pull inspiration from.

Tips?

Two things. 1. do everything ahead of time. But actually, buy and make things for the party in advance. Every weekend since March, we went out and gradually bought everything we needed for the party. In the few weekends before his party, we started to put things together. The night before, we decorated so we could wake up the next morning and start cooking. 2. be present. Do I wish I had better-staged photos to share of the big day? Yes. But at the end of the day, I was able to enjoy the party without my camera constantly snapping away.

The End

At the end of the party, we felt pooped, drained, and so happy. We are so grateful for the supportive family we have, we truly felt the love. I still cannot believe he’s already a year old. Time really does fly.

Have kids? What did you do for their first birthday?