Annabella's Seustastic 1st Birthday

My baby's first birthday was April 9th.  The first birthday is always bittersweet, isn't it?  It's the very first birthday celebration your child will ever have, so you want it to be one to remember.  However, while you're trying to play happy hostess to your friends and family, you're choking back tears and replaying their birth in your head all day.  We did have a great party though and I'd like to share how I pulled off a Suesstastic First Birthday for Annabella.  I got all of my inspiration from Pinterest and did the whole party on a really small budget.  I searched "Dr. Suess" or "Dr. Suess parties" and got tons of ideas.  Here is what I put together:

In our home, our breakfast area and family room open into each other, so I decorated both rooms and hosted guests in both areas.  This is the family room.

And a close up of the mantle:

I got the tissue paper puffs from Party City.  They were perfect for the theme.  Because I had a small budget, I used items from around the house for decorations.  The Dr. Seuss books were perfect additions to the mantle and I made all of the pennant banners out of scrap book paper.  I got lucky and caught Michael's having a great sale, so what would have been $0.50/sheet was only $0.12 a sheet.  Instead of threading string through the pennants, I just taped each individual pennant to the mantle and then taped crepe paper over the top.  It was a huge time saver and still looked great.  

I made these cute signs out of a piece of poster board.  They were between the family room and kitchen.

And here's the kitchen:

I had to thread these pennant banners together.  You can't get them to swag if you don't.  I bought all of the serving dishes from the Dollar Tree and the plates were $0.99/20 at Party City.  

Here's a side view.  Because we had the party at 2pm, we served party snacks:  fruit kabobs, pretzels, chips and dip, and at the last minute we decided to buy some pizza.

This is Annabella's smash cake.  It's not necessarily Suess themed, but it's bright and funky.  The candles are very Seuss-y.

For the rest of the guests, I baked Truffula Tree cupcakes.  

The cake was chocolate fudge with cream cheese icing.  The trees trunks were pretzel sticks and the truffula part was cotton candy.  There are a number of ways to make truffula tree cupcakes, but this was my inspiration. (I didn't follow this recipe for the cake.) Here's a tip I wish I'd had: do not put them in the refrigerator!  I had to do the tree part twice.  The night before, I made the cupcakes in their entirety, wrapped them in cellophane, and put them in the refrigerator.  By the next day, the cotton candy was hard as a rock and the pretzels were soggy.  So I had to make the trees all over again right before the party.  

I searched for free printables on Google and got these great labels for the treat bags.  Inside I put homemade fudge cookies and ring pops. 

Instead of playing a game with the kids (they varied from 1-5 in age), we did a project.  Thanks to www.obseussed.com, I found these great, free printables for Thing 1 and Thing 2 hand puppets.  Below is a photo of my husband helping Annabella color hers.

And here is Madelynn working on hers.

  

Here are a few photos of the birthday girl.

It was such a wonderful day!  By making most of the decorations, using the Dollar Tree for dishes, and utilizing Party City's bargain options we were able to do everything ,excluding the food, for under $50.  And even though we didn't buy any Dr. Suess plates or decorations, by using a red and blue color scheme with funky patterns it was clear what the theme was.  

Thank you for reading!!

Leslie