A Winter ONE-derland 1st Birthday!

Yes, another party post! What can I say, I have TWO winter babies, so we have parties on the brain all winter long!!!

As we are nearing my daughter’s 2nd birthday in February, I can’t resist sharing the theme from her first birthday last year, “Winter ONE-derland!” It was such a fun theme to put together and it was actually the party that inspired me to start this blog!

Now when you go to the party store, you will not find “winter ONE-derland birthday” stuck in between the Doc McStuffins and Ninja Turtle party decorations. It does take a little creativity, but it really is a pretty easy theme to throw together and you may already have a bunch of stuff that you can use in your own holiday decor. Anything with snowflakes or snowmen will work, and if you are planning your party after the holidays, you can find a lot snowflake items in stores at huge discounts!

Just as I did for my son’s Star Wars themed party in December, I ordered the invitation file for my daughter’s Winter One-derland party from Etsy (from Rachelle’s Printables). Etsy is the one place where you can actually find something in a “winter ONE-derland” theme. I usually have our party invitations printed on glossy photo paper from Walgreens or Target since they offer same day in store pickup, but since this was my daughter’s first birthday and I was doing an invite with a photo on it, I decided to splurge on a 5×7 invitation and had them printed at Staples, and I was still able to pick them up within 24 hours!

Our color scheme for the party was pink, white, silver, and baby blue. I have mentioned before that I love making my own banners for my kids’ parties because they are so customizable, and I can really use these banners to help set the whole theme. For this party I made a “Winter ONE-derland” banner, a “Happy Birthday” one, a simple pendant one with her name for the front of her high chair, and one for her monthly photos from throughout the year. The supplies that I used were regular white doilies, blue snowflake doilies, blue and white foam snowflakes from AC Moore, silver glitter string, and 2 packs of silver glitter letter stickers from Joann Fabrics. I did not have luck finding a lot of snowflake stuff in pink, so I bought a few sheets of pink glitter scrap-book paper and traced the foam snowflakes onto it, so that I could add some pink snowflakes to the banners as well.


I was super lucky with the timing of my party, because my sister actually threw a winter themed bridal shower a few weeks prior and was able to give me a bunch of the 3D paper snowflakes that they had made! You can see one in top right of the family photo above. These snowflakes are huge and so pretty, and can really add so much to a party. We hung them all over. They are made out of regular old printer paper, tape, and staples!!! Check out this tutorial!

I normally vow to never make my own cake or cupcakes for a party that I am throwing because it just adds too much stress, but when Ellie was a baby she had a lot of issues digesting grains. Even the smallest amount of rice cereal or oatmeal would have her throwing up for hours. By the time her first birthday rolled around, we were avoiding grains all together and also hadn’t tested any soy (which is in most pre-packaged frostings). You can not have a birthday party without cake, especially a first birthday, BUT the only thing worse than not having cake on your birthday, would be to have cake on your birthday that made you puke all night, so I knew that I had to play it extra safe. After a little research and a trial run, I made her a birthday cake from scratch using this recipe for the cake and this one for the frosting. (I am happy to say that her belly was more than happy to tolerate it’s first taste of birthday cake and by 18 months she was tolerating all grains, woohoo!)

I made her “smash cake” using disposable star shaped pans. I made a double layer cake and then piped the icing on top to make it look like a snowflake.

For our guests, I ordered plain pink and white whipped frosting cupcakes from ACME for $7.99/dozen. I then decorated them myself with some sugar snowflakes and Wilton sprinkles that I found at Cannon’s Cake and Candy Supplies. I popped them into frilly cupcake liners that were 10/$1.00 at Michael’s. Fancy cupcakes for less than $1.00 each!

For the favors we made lollipops using candy melts in a snowflake lollipop mold. We slipped them into a clear Wilton bag and added a plastic snowflake ring. I put them in a basket with some pillow batting to look like snow, and added a little sign saying “thank you snow much for coming.”

This was such a fun party to throw! It was pretty and girly and perfect for a first birthday. I can’t believe this party was already a year ago and my baby girl is about to turn TWO! Stay tuned for the details of her 2nd birthday party in another few weeks. The theme may just have to be another play on words ;).

xo
c

PS
I created a Winter ONEderland Pinterest board while I was planning this party that is full of so many more creative ideas!!! Feel free to follow it below!
Follow Happily Frazzled’s board A Winter ONEderland 1st Birthday on Pinterest.

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