Henry’s First Birthday on a Budget

Before my son was even six months I already had decided two things about his first birthday: 1. it was going to be amazing and 2. it was going to be on a budget.  I don’t believe that you need to spend a lot of money to do awesome things but you do need to be willing to put in some time to plan and execute.  Which brings me to the night of tiny party hats.

If you had told me a year ago that I would be sitting in my kitchen two days before my son’s birthday and gluing tiny pom-poms on tiny paper hats I would have looked at you like you were insane.  But there I was at 8pm cutting and gluing and hating everything in the universe that convinced me that this project would be “fun.”  Here is the thing.  Pinterest has ruined me, and about a million other parents, from ever thinking that their child deserves anything less than amazing when it comes to birthday parties regardless if their child will remember it or not (spoiler alert: your 1 or 2 year old will never remember).  Anyway, months before his birthday I started pinning ideas for his party.  I knew I wanted to have a general animal theme but wasn’t married to any specific ideas.  I also knew that I needed to do things on the cheap.  DIY projects mixed with some decorations bought at target and party city allowed for a nice mix that was cost effective and special.

So back to the party hats.  We bought several large animal figurines from Target as well as a tube of smaller animals from Hobby Lobby.  I gathered them together and used this tutorial to make the hats.  One thing I changed in how I did the hats vs. the tutorial was that I used a tiny bit of tape instead of glue to keep the hats together.  It was much easier than glue which was nearly impossible for me to get to stick without a mess.  It took me a good couple of hours of trial and error to get the hats to look the way I wanted because of the small size of the paper (1 inch) and the delicate nature of the origami paper.  Once they were done and the hats were glued on the animals I will admit I was pretty proud of myself for actually following through with it and not giving up.

The other major component of the decorations was the banner.  I really wanted a custom banner that I could DIY but was cheap and easy.  My husband found some Martha Stewart banners that had little pockets that fit printable cards so it was totally customizable.  Instead of printing the cards though I bought some large stickers of the alphabet and went the easiest possible route.  “Oh Henry” has been the hashtag I’ve used on my kiddos photos from day 1 so I thought it would be sweet to use that instead of the standard “Happy Birthday.”  The glitter star banner was a bit of a splurge from West Elm but I fell in love with it immediately and knew it was something I could re-use over and over again.  In fact, both the “Oh Henry” banner and the stars are hanging in the little man’s room as we speak.

The rest of the party decor is pretty self explanatory.  I kept the color palette to black, mint, red, and yellow and bought some decorations (balloons, paper straws, candle, and tissue paper honey combs) from target and party city.  Everything else used was stuff I already had (cake plates, mason jars, folding table, ect).  I also made those cupcakes you see under the glass domed cake plate using box mix (because I’m fancy) and adding colorful sprinkles and stuck an animal cracker on top like these.

Oh last thing.  Shout out to Sarah’s Cake Shop for making the smash cake.  It was so pretty and I’m sure it tasted great but yeah I was not about to taste it after the little man got his hands on it.

So here is the cost breakdown for the party:

Large animal figurines: $12 for 3 (target)

Small animal figurines: about $5 (hobby lobby-regularly $8 but I used a coupon)

Smash cake: $10 (Sarah’s Cake Shop)

Birthday cake: $10 (grocery store)

Cupcakes: $7 (cake mix, frosting, and animal crackers)

Balloons: $12 (party city; large bag of balloons + a foil “1” balloon, not pictured)

Tissue paper decorations: $16 for 4 packs of 2 (target)

Star banner: $20 (west elm)

Oh Henry banner: $8 (banner was $4 at Tuesday Morning + letter stickers were $4 at target)

Animal party hats: $6 (hobby lobby; origami paper and pom poms)

Yellow “1” candle: $3 (target)

Paper straws: $4 (tuesday morning + target)

total: $113

So for a little over $100 (which wasn’t spent all at once) we had a party for our little that was cute but, most importantly, also a lot of fun!  I also want to note that this party was small.  If you are going to throw a larger party you may be spending a bit more on cake ect.  I also did not factor in the groceries we bought for the food for the bbq so keep that in mind too. You know, full disclosure and all that.