Oh, what a deer! First Birthday Party

This little one really is a sweet little dear and a deer themed birthday seemed very appropriate. This party came together fairly quickly and I'm happy we were able to create a couple of free printables so it'll be even easier for someone else who likes the theme.

Invitation:

Decorations:

I purchased a banner and cake topper on etsy. Then I toured my house looking for deer decorations we could use. 

I had forgotten I'd made felted deer decorations a few years ago and came across these when I was decluttering my craft supplies. They were so sweet along the bottom of the chalkboard!

I also found playmobil deer, a ceramic deer from my Oma and Opa, a Christmas decoration, as well as non-fiction books from the library to use as decor throughout the house.

For each of our boys' first birthdays I've done a version of this sign for them. It's fun to see their stats and think about what makes them unique.

I like having a banner around the highchair for a first birthday and so I created this free printable, printed it on brown kraft cardstock, hole punched each piece and strung it on burlap ribbon with white dots (looking like a fawn).

Food:

We wanted to keep it fairly simple but filling. We had a cheese tray and crackers (just bought a mixed box of crackers), a pre-prepared fruit tray, made up our own veggie tray, bought guacamole, made homemade nacho dip, put out salsa and nachos. For a couple of hot options we had meatballs in the crockpot and purchased two Krinos Spinach and Feta Twister (basically spanikopita).

We also made a simple fruit punch with Sprite and extra water.

I decided to make a cake and wanted to go with the "naked cake" look which was mostly successful, though the real vanilla turned the icing a tan colour. I also had a 5 & 6 year old help me bake the cake and a 7 & 8 year old ice the cake, which was a lot of fun.

Activities:

We had two simple activities for the older kids. We printed out enough free deer dot-to-dot pages for the kids to each do one or take it home. Andrew made a free printable Pin the Tail on the Deer game. This type of game is always a hit at birthdays. 

Favours:

I purchased one copy of Bambi for each family and a giant chalk marker for each child that attended (from dollar store).