My baby boy is a YEAR old. And as all of the teary eyed mamas of growing babes say, “how can this be? time goes by so fast!” They say it, we say it, because it’s true. My babies growing up is one of the most bittersweet things I’ve experienced in my lifetime. My second babe is a year, y’all!
We held a little “party” for him a few days before his birthday. We kept it small, just inviting our immediate family members from both side to celebrate Sawyer with us. “Da Da” aka Chance, grilled hamburgers and hot dogs for our lil group. Who doesn’t love a reason for a cook out? Crowd pleasing and simple. Mama likes simple.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links that earn me a small commission, at no additional cost to you. However, I ONLY recommend products I personally love and/or use myself!
The Theme
I chose a teddy bear theme, “Bear-y First Birthday”. Because he’s my snuggly little bear cub hehe and the fact that he loves animals these days made it feel perfect. Since we were cooking out, it also felt fitting to incorporate some summery picnic / camping details.
My goal was obviously–cute. But I also wanted to stay as frugal as possible. It’s pretty easy to accidentally go all out for a birthday party with pinterest’s plethora of party detail ideas. So I was really intentional about narrowing down details that would bring the theme to life without buying a bunch of stuff I’d throw away afterwards. You’ll see that truly I just used tons of stuff I already had at home to bring it all together!
Keeping it Cost Friendly
The picnic basket is exactly that–our family picnic basket. I’ve had that letter board for years. I used a lantern Chance and I bought as a souvenir on a trip we took together. The cut wood piece underneath the cake was what our wedding cake sat on. The cake stand and round wood serving platter were from my “hosting” stash. The clothespins and twine for the photo banner were from my craft drawer. And the wooden animals around the table (except for the cake topper) were from among Nora and Sawyer’s toys!
Things I actually bought: Pans for food (Dollar tree), Bear Cake Topper (linked here), ketchup and mustard containers (linked here), Bear paper dessert plates (linked here), Plaid picnic plates (Walmart), napkins (Dollar Tree), table cloth (Dollar Tree), pack of beeswax candles (linked here), letter board stand (linked here), Balloons (Walmart).
My mother in law put together the balloon garland for me and I think it turned out marvelously! It was such a fun pop of color and focal point for the set up. It played a big part in tying in all of the colors and I just loved it so much.
And the party favor bags? I made them myself from brown paper bags (Dollar Tree), a sharpie (my junk drawer haha), and a sheet of scrapbook paper from Hobby Lobby! I filled clear treat bags with Hershey squares, marshmallows, and Teddy Grahams for an easy, fun, bear themed treat! I tied them with twine and set them inside the treat bags with a little bit of brown crinkled gifting grass.
The Cake
Since he was born, we have always called Sawyer our “Cinnamon Roll” haha. I knew I wanted to incorporate something around that into his party, so what better place to do so than the cake? I wanted something brown sugar + cinnamon-y for sure, the taste of a coffee cake but in the style of a layered birthday cake. That’s exactly what I went with and I made a cinnamon sugar vanilla icing to frost/decorate it with! I topped it with the wooden bear toy and one little beeswax candle. (I did make a lil tiny party hat for the bear out of scrapbook paper and stuck it on the bear using a small dab of icing!)
All in all, I think it came together so well and it was such a joy to put it all together for my boy. I know he won’t remember any of it (another great reason to keep things simple haha!) but I will. There’s so much that I’m going to remember about being his mama and the joy he brings our family. It was so much fun to get to celebrate him and his Bear-y first birthday!