Birthday Ideas: 1 Year

I know I say this every month, but I can't believe how old my baby is!!! Regardless, I had a ton of fun planning his first birthday party. I made three of these felt garlands:

For each garland, I used one "page" of felt in each color (yellow, blue, red, green and sparkly white). I traced circles about 2 inches in diameter so there were 20 circles on each felt sheet. After cutting them out, I just lined them up and sewed one straight line down the center. No pinning.. because I hate pinning. I added a little ribbon on each side to help with hanging (but we just taped them to the windows anyway... sheesh.)

My mom has a birthday banner made from cardboard (she bought it at a party supply store, and it doesn't sound cute, but it is.) Each year growing up I loved walking in the door after school to see that banner hanging for my birthday. I wanted something like that for each of my kids as well - something to make them feel special year after year. I saw this banner in my friend, Hannah's etsy store, and I decided to make one. I changed it just a tiny bit by making the letters with cotton fabric (white sparkly!) instead of felt, and by adding "CONGRATS" on the back of "BIRTHDAY" to get more use out of it. I liked how hers could be tied together or hung separately - so the "congrats" side could be hung alone. I love the way it turned out!

Once I was on etsy.com - I spent a whole afternoon (or day...) browsing the 5,000 birthday items. It was really addicting. But I found this idea, and it was totally worth it:

I just whipped these up in Photoshop... and glued them on wooden skewers cut in thirds. I made some in red, blue, yellow and green. For the stars, I microwaved airheads (and yellow starbursts) for a few seconds, rolled them flat, then cut out the shapes with cookie cutters. I did the same thing for his cake but with the letters of his name: Harvey is 1!