I’m still in awe of how fast Brody’s first year of life flew by. Like, whaaaat? I have a few friends who are having babies now and looking at a newborn compared to my baby is odd.  It’s like I can’t even call the Brodster a baby anymore! He’s a full-on toddler these days! 

With that being said, Brody is and always has been SUCH a good boy, I mean he really is. We know we are a lucky parents. Aside from his terrible reflux for the first 9 months of his life, he’s been one of the easiest babies I’ve ever come across. Obviously he deserved one heck of a first birthday party!!

And that is exactly what he got. Last week, we touched on the basic planning of the party {if missed, check out the post here *it includes a 20% off Etsy discount code that you should probably check out*} and this week, it’s all about the DETAILS! 

I’ll start by saying I have never been a huge DIYer, but as a teacher, I do love me some creative projects! Being able to plan Brody’s #1 and use my creativity to design a few exciting elements for the party totally took away the void I’ve been feeling not teaching my favorite first graders this year. 

FACT: two more things I miss about being a teacher… 1) my classroom printer and 2) the workroom laminator. This party was the perfect excuse to buy both for my home. I mean, how was I going to tackle these projects without these two basic DIY necessities. So that’s exactly what I did! I got this printer and this laminator. They are both AMAZING!! And with Amazon Prime, I was able to get them both in 2 days! I love me some Amazon Prime. {i feel like everyone has amazon prime these days but if you don’t, what are you waiting for?? click HERE to sign up!}

Above you’ll see a pic of the food table! Because the theme of the party was cars, I wanted to make the table look like an actual car! The red, yellow, and green colors stem from a stop light!! Do you get it?!? These colors made up for most of the party decorations :)  The tires are actually pool rafts! How cool is that?!? So whenever we take a our next warm vacay with swimming involved, we will obviously be bringing them with us! You can find these tire rafts here. 

The SPARE TIRES idea with the chocolate donuts I got from Pinterest! Oh how I love pinterest! I bought the skittles and my mom offered to divide out the colors for me – thank you Mom!! I knew I wanted to have some healthy food on the food table too and the STOP LIGHT FRUIT was the perfect way to showcase the strawberries, pineapple, and grapes! I made all these signs myself. If you are doing a car-themed party and would like me to send you the signs, just let me know! I would be happy to! 

I am literally KILLING myself right now! I ordered the CUTEST EVER custom car cookies from the DaintyCakesByAndrea Etsy shop. You can kiiiiiinda see them in the pic above but not really, ugh! Luckily, Andrea, the shop owner, came to my rescue and let me use some of her photos – check out the car cookies below that I ordered! Andrea is the nicest! SO nice that she is giving my readers a 10% off discount to anything in the shop using the code IADORE10 {all caps + the number 10}!!!!! Unfortunately, timing isn’t great because she is currently on vacation getting some much needed r&r but her shop reopens on February 29th! I will remind you on that day to go purchase your cookies through her Etsy shop with the 10% off discount! Promise! 

{DaintyCakesbyAndrea car cookie photos via}

Are these cookies not the cutest?? Literally everyone was devouring them up! You know I can’t eat gluten but if I didn’t know any better {from watching everyone else eat them} I’d say they tasted as great as they looked =) Thank you Andrea for your generosity!! 

Can we backtrack a bit? When the guests walked into Kidville, the party venue, I had these Illinois LICENSE PLATE signs inside cones that lined both sides of the little hallway area. This was the best picture I have of the signs but there were 8 of them in total, all with cute different sayings on the license plates. I thought of this just a few days before the party and knew that I had to make this project happen! Don’t even ask me how I created the license plates because it was A PROCESS!! But you can find the cones here.

Another DIY that I made was the MEMORY LANE “Brodster Avenue” photo wall! Though time consuming, it was super easy and really fun to sift through all his pics and find my favorites! Once I finally decided on the ones that I was going to use, I had them printed out and then divided them out by each month of Brody’s life! People were coming up to me the whole time telling me how much they adored it! It’s still so hard to believe how small he was and how much he’s grown just over the course of one year! You guys, INSANE.

On the guests way out of the party, they saw the goodie bag table {which I will be dedicating a whole blog post to soon!} and before that, an area to stop and write a message to Brody! This was so fun and everyone wrote the sweetest things! This book will be something he can treasure and have for the rest of his life {or if I’m being realistic, I will treasure and have it for the rest of MY life hahaha}.

I also created a few other signs that we hung up at the appropriate places! I actually backed all these signs on construction paper and them laminated them with my new laminator! I pretty much laminated every sign that you saw at the party. That thing really came in handy! 

Oh! And I’m dedicating an upcoming post to the smash cake but I just wanted to tell you guys now that I created a RESERVED PARKING road sign to save the birthday boy’s smash cake high chair seat… I die!

Now, just to touch on what we did at the party – everyone showed up and then we all went into the art room where the kids played with blocks, other fun toys, clay, and of course, there was a craft too! The kids got to draw on these little wooden blocks that you see in the below photo. They were so cute and fun for everyone of all ages! There was also a face painter there too for the older kids! It was so sweet! 

Later, we all went into the huge gym room and that’s when the real fun started! There was a bouncy house, the Kidville staff lead the babies in parachute play, and there was even a zip line! It was so much fun that the adults were enjoying every minute of this portion of the party as well! 

And then we came home and it was all about the presents. Brodster wanted to open them before they were even in our apartment! Literally.  

The best part about the party is that Mr. Brody had the best time ever!! Thank you to everyone who celebrated with us and I am so glad that I am able to share it all with my readers today! It was definitely a first birthday to remember :) As previously mentioned, stay tuned for upcoming party posts about the smash cake and then the goodie bags! Woohoo!! {more Etsy discount codes to come as well!!}

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Don’t forget about the 10% off coupon code – IADORE10 – to use at the Etsy shop DaintyCakesByAndrea when the shop reopens on February 29th!! And just an FYI, she makes cookies in all different themes, shapes, and colors. Each one is more adorable than the next!! 

[bctt tweet=”Brody’s First #BirthdayParty DETAILS! #carthemed #roadsigns #memorylane #lotsofDIY #DIY”]

What are your favorite baby birthday party themes?
Tell me in the comments!