Charlie's first birthday party was a blast. Hooray! We survived not only his first year but his first birthday party, too. Here is just taste of what it looked like...
For food, I served everything in foil-covered dishes and in aluminum tins. We had "Marshmallow Bytes," "Nuts and Bolts" Chex mix,
"Cupcake Nybbles," Twizzler "Wires," robot lollipops (from Oriental
Trading), "Browser Cookie" Whoopie Pies (with orange and green
sprinkles), "Circuit Board" sugar cookies, robot "Spare Part" krispy pops,
"Cellulose Composites" fruit kabobs, "Motherboards" (graham crackers),
"Gears" (cheese Ritzbitz), and "Memory Chips" (sweet potato chips).
Charlie's birthday smash cake was a big orange sprocket, too.
Side note: these ridiculous krispy pops took WAY too long. I read somewhere that I could make them easier by using rice krispy bases instead of doing cake pops. Somebody told me
a lie. These puppies kept splitting down the middle before they could harden up. Grr... And when they finally did harden up, they were crazy tough to eat in a public way. On a different note though, the "Marshmallow Bytes" were divine. And super easy to make, too.
I decorated the place with orange and green balloons - Charlie's favorite - and a banner of monthly birthday pictures of him from his first 12 months. When he came into the living room after his nap, little mister lit up with glee at all the balloons! So sweet. I also put up hand-cut paper sprockets all over the walls and in the windows some cardboard robot shapes we spray painted orange, blue, and green. My mom spent a few hours gluing a cardboard and crepe "one" for the door (amazing) and Tim created the awesome giant robot for the room.
The games and activities were great too. My friend Ann led us in a little circle song that started the party off - one which involved dancing in the center of the circle like a robot. H.I.L.A.R.I.O.U.S. And then we had the kiddos open up the giant robot to find a secret surprise. Turns out that the big robot had "replicated" and had baby bots for the kids to decorate. This took some time, as we have several little artists who were present. We had a robot parade afterward so everyone could see the handiwork. We also held a sprocket toss (with giant sprocket erasers from Michael's dollar bin) and had wind-up robot races.
I was quite proud of the party favor bags, too. A while back, I found these great Ziploc robot baggies which saved me tons of time. My mom found the adorable robot rubber ducks on Oriental Trading. And just recently, Michael's had a ton of great stuff (stickers, watercolor pages, finger puppets) in the cheapo bins. All in all, with a bit of scissors, printing, and time, I came up with an inexpensive and super fun baggie for the kids to bring home.
Charlie made a total mess with his birthday cake. That boy did NOT know what to
make of all that orange sticky stuff! He was too funny. And then he
tried to share the rest of his cake with me... Oh no sir. I think he quite enjoyed being sung to, though.
Finally, we HAD to have a photobooth of course. What is a party without one of those?!? Here's to all our fabulous guests and their beautiful smiles...
It's time to give out some other party creds: the circuit board cookies were inspired by the
Not So Humble Pie blog from her funny scientific cookie round-up, the robot krispy pops were inspired by
Bakerella's cake pop book, and the twelve months of birthdays banner of Charlie was inspired by a similar one I saw on this adorable children's party blog -
Hip Hip Hooray. It's seriously a personal favorite to read due to some cuteness eye-candy factors. Thanks to my BFF Christie for sending me a bunch of robot stuff - especially all the felt which made for the world's cutest disposable robot bib. And of course, much thanks goes out Diva and Poppa - my parents - for being awesome and doing all sorts of work from spray painting hats to gluing crepe paper to being my Oriental Trading Company dealer. And last but never least, thanks to the amazing Tim Bomgardner, without whom I would have spent even
longer long nights folding and cutting and all that stuff. Babe- you are all that
and a bag of Doritos.
Happy birthday Charlie! We love you! xoxox - Momma, Dada, and Big Brother Oz
