Time flies when you’re turning ONE! 

Hot air balloons and vintage planes… my oh my, how time flies!

 

A few weeks ago, during a lucky stretch of beautiful sunshine in an otherwise gray and dreary week, we celebrated Patrick’s first birthday with our nearest and dearest. It was such a fun celebration for our baby boy. I thought I’d share all the details here, just like I did for Watson and Rosie’s first birthdays (you can see those party posts here and here… as well as Watson’s 2nd party here and his 5th here!)

 

Katie Corley made the invitation (digital invite shown below) and party signage (will point out which ones as we go). Even as a true lover of paper, I’m finally to the point where I’ve fully embraced the Paperless Post. With multiple kids and the weekend birthday party circuit, it just makes things so much easier!

 

You can see we really went for it with the Chick-Fil-A nuggets. I swear they are always the first thing to run out at every party! I also got a chicken salad croissant tray from Chicken Salad Chick, as well as a side of pasta salad and fruit. Added in a spinach dip + some snacks and Uncrustables for the kids and we were golden. The party was at 3pm, so it really wasn’t a meal time and I justwanted to have heavy snacks!

Most all of the photos in this post are by Erin Bower Photography. Charleston friends, if you’re in need of a photographer, she is so wonderful! We happened to get to talking the week of the party and she shared that she is growing her photography business. I then thought how nice it would be to have someone to take photos of our celebration. One thing off my plate so that I could spend more time enjoying our family and friends. She was just so wonderful. You can take a look at her beautiful IG feed here!

 

 

Above is the look of two very tired parents!! Below are some of my besties! So thankful for them!

 

I bought the digital version of this sign on Etsy and very easily updated it using the Canva website. I was sent these instructions with my order confirmation and I can confirm it was all complete in just minutes! I then sent the sign to our local FedEx to be printed on foam board. I used this tabletop easel to hold it up.

 

The cake is by Wicked Fancy Cakes. Ali is such a gem to our Charleston community! Her cakes are at nearly every celebration within my friend group. Not only are they a true centerpiece, but they taste delicious! If only I could send a piece of cake to each one of you so you could know how delicious her cakes are. This one was a vanilla with salted caramel filling. I dream of it. I told Ali I wanted this cake to feel like a “fancy baby nursery” rather than more of a cartoonish design. She totally nailed it.

 

 

 

 

I knew we were going to have quite the age spread at this party, with children from 7 months to 9 years, and an arts and crafts table felt like a great way to keep kiddos of all ages entertained. I rented the table and chairs from Jumping King. Tablecloths are a very old Target find, but these are similar.  Katie made the “Flight Training” signs, which I thought could work for whatever activity I ended up going with. I bought these little wooden airplanes on Etsy. They are perfect for painting, which I set up with these paint sets from Amazon. I ordered the digital file for the personalized coloring sheets on Etsy and printed them out myself!

 

 

Patrick’s outfit is Lila & Hayes! They have the sweetest, softest children’s clothing. This is the Palmer Bubble and it has been a longtime favorite. They did the beautiful monogramming as well. Watson’s polo, which you’ll see later on in this post, is also by Lila + Hayes!

 

Back to the food. Instead of labeling each food item, which I’ve done before (super cute especially if each food title is a play on the theme), I just did one “In-Flight Snacks” sign, which Katie Corley made. I framed the signage with inexpensive white frames I found at Michaels.  The blue and white striped napkins are from Amazon and we used these plates! I like the 7.5in size for parties because they are big enough for food, but not too big to also be used as cake plates. This set came with 72, which was plenty for both!

 

The airplane + cloud banner along the front of the table is from Etsy. You can choose whichever colors you’d like for the planes. Cute!

 

 

I love the sweetness that bunches of baby’s breath can bring. I wanted to make sure Patrick’s party looked super sweet and didn’t look like a toddler birthday party (which easily could happen with an airplane theme), so the baby’s breath was one of the ways I tried to achieve that softness.

This is me trying to hold onto every second of having a baby that I can… not rushing the toddler steps at all!

 

I used these little acrylic frames to show off Patrick’s monthly milestone photos on the food table… from 1 month old on the far left, all the way to 12 months on the right!

 

I rented the white bounce house + slide, the ball pit, the children’s table & chairs from Jumping King. They were so wonderful to work with!

 

I also rented the two arches behind Patrick’s high chair from them. They were so nice to custom paint the arches to the exact colors I wanted. I also hired Jumping King to make the balloon garland!

I painted the hot air balloon, the plane (below, off to the right), and clouds on foam board and just stuck them on with command strips.

 

The sign below is by Katie Corley. For this larger 18×24 size, she didn’t mail me the physical copy as she did with the smaller paper goods. I was emailed the digital file and easily sent it to my local FedEx (via their website) to be printed on foam board. I stood it up with this easel!

 

Katie also did the signage + stationery below! I had guests write a message to Patrick in The Little Airplane book. Just a note that the fine tip Sharpie Marker didn’t work very well inside the glossy pages of the book. It worked well enough though!

 

This sweet highchair banner is from Etsy!

 

Wicked Fancy Cakes did the smash cake, too. And here’s a better look at the main cake. Ugh, I just loved it so much.

 

 

Now for the end of the party… the Baggage Claim! I used these luggage favor boxes in the “big box” size (stole this idea from Katie Corley!) and filled them with a few themey items, like these blank passport journals, airplane stamps, and mini airplane pens (they pop out, expanding into a ballpoint pen). Katie, if you haven’t already guessed, made the baggage claim sign and favor tags. This is the ribbon I used!

 

Sources

 

 

Let me know if I missed anything by commenting on today’s Instagram reel!