P is for Party....

Although it didn't go just according to plan, my son's first birthday still turned out pretty spectacular I'd say. The weather didn't cooperate, but my Mother in law was nice enough to let us clean her basement the night before, so we could have the party there. I felt bad, because I was planning it outdoors I invited a ton of people, but she was so nice to help make it great! I know I went overboard, but my son loved it! He was pointing to all the decorations and balloons with the biggest smile on his face! It was all worth it.

My son loves to read and he especially loves his Sesame Street books that I picked up at the dollar spot over at Target. Between his love of those books and a picture of my younger brother's birthday from 1985, I had my theme, Cookie Monster. Well Cookie Monster, plus my added theme, "use what you have."

In that photo from 1985, my Mother had made an amazing Cookie Monster Cake, I tried to copy it. Here is a photo of the cake, that I made, MYSELF, from scratch, and decorated it MYSELF too, the frosting from scratch as well. I am really proud of myself, I am not artistic whatsoever.

Here is the present table, where I hung his "monthly" photos. A couple years ago I was at IKEA and they were blowing out wrapping paper at $.25 a roll, I pick up a bunch of rolls, the same pattern, but different colors. The blue was PERFECT for a Cookie Monster theme, so perfect in fact that we used it as a backdrop for our "photo booth."
Since I already had a bunch of scrapbook paper in different shades of blue, I just went with it. I really didn't have money to spend. I found this cute paper hat template HERE. We brought over my son's Cookie Monster stuffed animal, he was a perfect addition to the party.

You may remember my frames from my bebe shower. The "cookie jars" were my baby food jars with a little Cookie Krisp cereal and my little Cookie Monster figurines were from the dollar spot at Target.

I used my Silhouette for everything in this party, it was so fast, and I love how it turned out.
I made the smash cake too!
I used different jars from my pantry, even though they were different shapes and sizes, I think they worked out well. I added some ribbon and twine to jazz them up a bit. The large jar I found at Tai Pan Trading for a steal at $7.97! I added a fun Cookie Monster sticker from Michael's to the front. I made all of the cookies from scratch, well except the Oreos, those were my husband's request, we never have them at home.
Planning early is a must for me! I saved so much money by doing so. I knew I wanted "milk bottles", but wasn't going to spend money on them. So, in January I asked coworkers to give me any old Starbucks bottles they were going to throw away. I washed them and spray painted the lids and "voila" milk bottles! I got the idea for the Cookie Monster cups from Hostess with the Mostess.
Some really inexpensive decor, tissue paper pom poms, and a felt circle garland.
I used my son's "M" from his room, it worked perfect.
For the kid's we had a game to guess how many cookies are in the cookie jar. The prize was Cookie Monster book, Cookie Monster stamp, and Cookie Monster figure, all from the dollar spot at Target.
I really scored with the favors, and didn't spent a cent of my own money. Let me explain. My husband sold some of his old text books to Amazon, so we had some online credit. I purchased these letter and number cookie cutters with the credit, so they were free! I used bags I already had from other favors, and leftover ribbon. I cut out the tags with the Silhouette and had them say "This party was brought to you by the letter "M" and the number 1." I printed out some recipes for sugar cookies to go along with them and placed them in a milk crate my Mother in law had.
We set up a coloring table for the kids with coloring pages I printed off the PBS kids website. We used an elegant paper table cloth, so we didn't have to worry about crayon on the nice ones. We had foam stickers, stamps, and Sesame Street stickers.
Overall, everyone had fun, and it turned out great, even on a budget. I think I spent around $50 total, which I felt was really reasonable for a party of 50 people. You only turn 1 once!