How to throw a 1 year old birthday party.

I still can't believe my baby just turned one. This year has flown by. I love that I have been able to stay home the whole year with her and her big sister.

Since one of our good friend's little girl turned 1 the week before Isla we decided to do a joint party and it turned out so good that I think we might be doing this again next year. We rented out an indoor play place - Mega Fun 4 Kids. It worked out great, we were able to bring our own food and cakes in and got to split the cost.

So even though it was a joint party we still each made our own invitations and cakes for the our girls.

I had an idea to use butterflies in Isla's invitation but then thought I should have her cat in it since she loves them so much - dat (cat) was her first word. I had fun in Photoshop creating this spring invite.

To keep with the theme I made these spring cupcakes.

I made chocolate cupcakes. I'm not sure why I keep trying to make cake from scratch, they always turn out a little dry. I'm not sure if it's my baking or if because I made the cupcakes Friday afternoon for a Sunday party. They still tasted good and looked really cute. I used blue icing on the top levels to look like sky and on the bottom I used my icing tip that has a bunch of holes in it so it looked like grass. I made the icing green and then to add more interest I put some of the green gel colouring in the icing bag with a toothpick. It didn't work as much as I would have thought be did add some colour variation.

In an earlier post I mentioned the cookies I was making. I think all together they look cute even if they aren't perfect. I have flower and cat cookies on the grass and butterflies in the sky.

For the goody bags I made these I Spy bottle. I got the idea from my nephew who had one. My sister-in-law said it was a great car toy. I made one for Lilo for our plane ride back in March and thought it would be fun to make for everyone. The 1 year olds might not get how to work it but it still makes a neat sound when you shake it.

I collected a bunch of things to put inside, it can be changeling to find items that fit though the top of a bottle. To personalize each one I made name plates with shrinky dinks. Since we already had one I didn't make ones for Lilo and Isla so their names below got made into necklaces.

Type out a list of all the items and put them in the bottles and then fill 2/3 full with rice or whatever you want. The more rice you put in the harder it is since the items don't have room to move around. I also added some glitter and sequins. Don't add too much glitter. The first one I did the glitter came out really fast and it all stuck to the sides so now it's even hard to find stuff through the layer of glitter.

Once it's all in, shake it up and glue the lid on. I added a bit of ribbon around the lid.

I printed out the list of items on card stock and then covered both sides of the list with clear packing tape as my cheap laminating. Cut it out and punched a hole in it to attach to the bottle.

For my 2 older nephew's (who have one of these already) I made them a Make your own Flubber kit that I found here. I made it with Lilo the week earlier, it's so cool and fun to play with.