So if you know me really well, you know one of my favorite things to do is throw big parties. I love planning baby showers, birthdays…you name it!

Even though I’ve only been in the baby business about 5 years now (my oldest is 4), I’ve thrown my share of parties.  So for my next series, I wanted to share with you birthday party ideas for different themes I’ve done!

In addition, I thought it might also be useful to provide gift list ideas for these age groups. I know when we have a birthday party coming up I scramble to find a gift and Amazon is my go to! However, I often find myself spending too much time trying to figure out what they’d like. To help you out, I’m doing the research for you! These will be coming soon as well!

Today though, I want to start with a birthday party that was near and dear to my heart. My oldests daughter’s very first.

For her 1st birthday, I picked a Snow White theme. Cute backstory: When I was super pregnant with her my husband went with me to Babies R’ us to look for a coming home outfit. Bless his heart, he walks up with a Snow White baby costume and suggests it. I about melted into a puddle right then and there. Of COURSE we bought it! She came home in something much warmer (she was born in winter), but I did a whole bit of her newborn pics in the outfit. So a Snow White first birthday party was a given!

Before I get too deep into party planning, I wanted to share with you a few pics of her 1 year old session and cake smash. I used these for her party decor. She was HILAROUS with her cake. I was a TOTAL first time mom and it was literally her first taste of sugar. She demolished it!

I used a lot of the cake smash props as decorations for her party, so you will see more of them coming up.

Invitations

I did a themed photo shoot for her invite pics.  I don’t have pics of the invites but you can see one in the ribbon ball picture below. 

Venue

We went CHEAP here. Very close to our house back then was a tiny little community building. We rented it for the day for 35 bucks. $35 bucks y’all! It wasn’t the nicest, most modern venue but it held our 50(ish) guest comfortably and provided all the necessary amenities.

Food

Creating food to fit a theme is one of my dorky pastimes. I love having a menu that relates to our parties. For her 1st party we went a little over the top and provided too much food!

We had a “Dwarf Food” section which had tons of small appetizers like deli rolls, quiches, meatballs, fruit, and more. I designed a cute little sign I threw in a Dollar Store picture frame and stuck it in the middle.

A “Queen’s Candy Apple Bar” where guests could make their own candy apple with toppings we provided (I’ll share my husband’s candy apple caramel recipe below). I also made a cute sign to go with this. Unfortunately, it appears I didn’t snag a shot of this.

And, we had a desert table complete with a huge cake, smash cake, chocolate dipped pretzels, Oreos, and peanut butter crackers. We had a local bakery do the cake and I did the rest (hence why they aren’t so photogenic – however, I have sense bought molds and gotten alot better at them).

I’m telling you. I may have went a little over the top!.

Decorations

I had so much fun with these! I spent months carefully designing them and making them. I found a few ideas on Pinterest but did a lot of my own also.

We rigged up the ceiling decorations with a ladder and a few pushpins. We used tablecloths and tissue balls, poms and fans.  I bought the poms and fans at the Dollar store and made the balls myself.  I plan to post a tutorial soon!

My absolute favorite was our ribbon ball tree. I’d seen a few ball in planter ideas on Pinterest and combined a few of them to create this one. This took FOR-EVER, but I loved the result so much I couldn’t bare to get rid of it. It still sits in our playroom to this day!

I made her a really simple high chair banner with tulle and taped it on.  Cautionary advise: Glitter tulle gets EVERYWHERE and shows up even weeks later!

The backdrop consisted of streamers hung with thumbtacks and a banner I designed for her.

I also love creating digital chalkboards for  birthdays. This was my first one years ago, and I learned a hard lesson that you don’t wait til the last minute and use Elmer’s glue to stick one on a foam board. I have since figured out the best way to is to have them actually printed on paper  boards like at Walgreens.  It’s a little pricey but lasts forever and I think these make cute decorations for playrooms and bedrooms!

I have done so many of these and if you are interested I can create one for you to match any theme. You can find my listing for these on Etsy here.  I promise they look a TON better than this picture!

To add to the decorations on the desert table, I made large fans out of scrapbook cardstock paper and hot glued an apple dye cut to them.  (Tutorial coming soon!)

I also threw this together with the dye-cut machine at my school.  It didn’t turn out quite as I’d hoped but was a cute way to show her yearly growth.  Now that I have a Silhouette, I did this much differently for my youngest’s first party.

We kept the table setting simple and cheap.  I used plastic table clothes, and mason jar vases for flowers.  I set out more pictures from her one year old photos and cake smash.  We also tied red, yellow and blue balloons to the chairs.

Since photography is a hobby and part time job of mine, we have no shortage of pictures of our children.  I displayed them throughout in Dollar Tree frames I spray painted various colors.  On the gift table we had some of her one year old photos of her spelling the word ONE.

I found the Disney characters around lots of different places but purchased the majority of them on Amazon.  I also bought a huge life sized Snow White balloon  that escaped shortly into the party.  If you are interested in checking those out.  Here are some links.

For your convenience, this post contains affiliate links. If you purchase from these links I may make a small commission at no cost to you.

Favors

I wanted to do favors for different type guests since there were a lot of adults at this party.  For the kids (ironically only girls except one boy), I created headbands.  I bought the headbands off Amazon and followed a very simple Pinterest tutorial.  I also made a Princess headband holder to display them.  We also still have that in the playroom!

We also set out pictures of her for the adults, and candy jars.  I used old baby food containers and spray painted the lids red. I added a tiny bow and used printable stickers to create a label.  Then we filled them with red, white and yellow M & Ms.

We also set out a book for guests to sign on the favor table.  We put this  book aside for her to read and treasure later.  I picked up the dolls from the Disney Store.

So there you have it!  Our first baby’s Snow White party!  Have other ideas to share?  Drop them in the comments!