As I was looking for ideas to celebrate my daughter’s first birthday, I was inundated with many “Texas” or “western” themes using bright colors and mostly pink. Although very young, I knew an overly pink themed party wasn’t right for my daughter’s personality, as she was already showing a spunky, independent and unique personality all her own.
Since my husband and I love our Texas roots, I wanted to bring in some of these southern influences that were used in her nursery we created with colors of red, white and tan with sunflower and accents (this was also the theme of my baby shower as seen in the diaper cake image below).
When the time came for her first birthday party, I knew I wanted to pull similar design ideas from the baby shower and her nursery but make it different enough to be unique for her new budding personality.
Southern Sweetheart 1st Birthday Party!
First came selecting a date and location, which we found the perfect location for any children’s party for kids who love the outdoors and animals: Clay’s Restaurant. Clay’s is a full-service restaurant in a small rural setting in the heart of Houston, Texas that offers great food, animals for the kids to interact with, and a place for kids to run around.
Second was designing the invitations. I found the perfect paisley pattern paper at Michael’s that was a mix of salmon pink, sunflower yellow, light green and robin’s egg blue. The paisley paper was used as a background to the inside invitation wording and was layered onto to a rustic tan folded card with matching envelope. The front of the invitation was decorated with a sunflower outlined in an accent color from the paisley paper.
Then came the fun projects!
- Custom birthday banner
- Themed menus and place mats
- Treat/favor bags
- Sunflower pinata
For the happy birthday banner, I used white doilies purchased from any craft store, added a small circle of card stock for strength, printed the letters onto yellow card stock then glued the letters on to the doilies and strung with natural “sisa” rope (again found in any craft store).
Treat/favor bags were created with natural gift bags decorated with doilies! Kids used the same bags to hold the goodies from the pinata.
Since I could not find a decently-priced sunflower pinata online, I decided to make my own which turned out to be the most time-consuming project yet! I started with a sun pinata purchased from a party supply store, removed the crepe paper decorations (stripped the pinata down to the cardboard) and added yellow and brown tissue paper that coordinated with the rest of the projects.
Lastly, I ordered a fabulous cake from a local bakery in which they piped the frosting to make it look like ruffles all over and placed a sugar sunflower on top, the smash cake was an identical version that sat on a sunflower plate from Pier 1 Imports.
GiggleFishCreations 