A Blueberry birthday party – a sweet celebration for a 1 year old and his favorite food

When your rainbow baby turns one, It requires a celebration! But those one year olds really cant tell you what kind of party they want, can they? Which is why we chose his favorite food as a theme and ran with it. A Blueberry birthday party! His berry first birthday.

I have a hard time when my babies turn one. Not for the reasons one would expect.. but more like, I feel guilty for not feeling as sentimental as I’m told I should be. I think the sentiment comes in the years to follow – looking back at videos and pictures of your baby and wishing you knew who they were like you know them now, but were able to spend time with them once more so small.

When my babies turn one, I am so excited to get to know them more and more. To see their personality explode. They are sweet and adorable and at times just pure joy when they are infants, but honestly, babies stress me out even if they are easy. It took three years and IVF to conceive this boy and dodging Covid the whole time, he was a newborn when the world was horrified by the record setting RSV numbers, etc. etc. Much of his early infancy I was too anxious. I was always horrified that something was going to happen to him. So for many reasons, turning one was time to celebrate!!

Theme+invitations

I consider myself rather minimalist. But the two things I go ham on: birthdays and Halloween costumes. Two of the main things I looked forward to most as a mom. So needless to say, I am always thinking of themes and details months before I should be.

But what in the world kind of theme do you pick for a little person whose only interests are things like doorstops, keys, and breastfeeding. Oh wait! And blueberries!!

When I tell you this boy has been obsessed with blueberries I kid you not his sweet little “I just started eating solids” baby poop… it was purple. Like all the time. And it smelled of blueberries. That’s a weird way to start this post, but alas, if you’re here you’re gonna have to get on board with weird.

When I first landed on this theme I of course searched for inspiration and was happy to find this sweet celebration and fell instantly in love with the handlettered invitation which strongly inspired the invitation for our son’s party.

I printed the invitations through my favorite favorite printing service : Thikit. The quality is always stunning and the prices are so affordable. You know these needed to be stuffed in blue envelope and cherry on top was the adorable little blueberry stamps that I added. They are .04 stamps so the extra $.18 I spent on them was very worth it, hah.

decor+details

I don’t think my children will ever believe it is a birthday party without a proper balloon arch. And honestly, same. Its such a big impact for such a small price. $18 for this one and not only did I use it to make a balloon arch, I hung balloon blueberries… balloonberries if you will.. with felt leaves all over the party as well!

You see that fabric scrap backdrop? That was a real sweet and full circle moment for me to use this for the third time. The first time? Our wedding! Yup, this was the backdrop I made for our wedding. Second time? Our daughter’s first birthday backdrop! And now, it was perfect (albeit a bit more wrinkly, just like me) to use for the third time for a blueberry birthday backdrop. Somehow it ended up fitting each theme perfectly when I didn’t even plan around using this. Maybe I can hand it down to use at our grand baby’s first birthdays.

I’m not sure its a written rule, but somehow its known that one year old parties require the infamous 12 months of photos hung for everyone to see how incredibly fast babies grow that first year.

the Food

I try to keep the food as affordable but crowd pleasing and filling as possible. But also attempting to stay on theme. That included things like that lovely bag of chick fil a dupe nuggets from costco, costco blueberry muffins quartered, some candied bacon, and these brie and blueberry bites. Accompanied by both a kid friendly and adult pleasing versions of blueberry lemonade.

I had this brilliant idea to use the fruit crates that you get from whole foods to create cute little flower arrangements with babys breath for some centerpieces. I also was excited to find these berry-like florals from the clearance section at the grocery store flower department. It was a really affordable and on theme way to dress up the party without being wasteful. Speaking of avoiding waste, I opted for purchasing gingham fabric for the tables (instead of a one time use tablecloth) and will most definitely have a use for this sometime in the future.

the cake

I had these big ambitions to bake a lemon blueberry cake for the party but then quickly realized how big of an undertaking that would have been to be able to feed the amount of guests that would be coming. And also, I had plenty of other things to prep for the party, I didn’t want to add baking a massive cake to that to do list. So I opted for my forever fail-safe Costco cake to feed the masses. But I scraped off most of the frosting, added blueberries and baby’s breath and suddenly it looked more like a fancy bakery cake.

I did end up baking a smash cake for the birthday boy. He actually got the lemon blueberry cake and then this way, if it ended up not being great, he was my easiest critic! I will say that it turned out SO GOOD. I will pat myself on the back for that one. And I totally got to eat most of it anyway.

party favors

To know me, is to know that I loathe party favors. The waste, the clutter, the obligation. Yes, I want to thank everyone for taking time out of their lives to celebrate our son with us. But i do not want to send them home with something stupid that will end up in the landfill. For this blueberry birthday party I decided to make take home make your own blueberry muffin bags! A dry mix complete with instructions and even muffin cups.

activities

One year old parties are tough for activities, either you are entertaining a bunch of adults, or a bunch of babies – two very different demographics. But since we had a lot of big sisters friends here (she basically thought this was her party) we had to entertain 4-10 year olds. I bought some blue and white poster board and green cardstock and made a “pin the leaf on the blueberry” game. I also outlined the invitation and turned it into a coloring page and printed it huge as a “engineer print” at office max for $1.50.

sources

balloons / wood cake stand / white cake stand / birthday boy romper / letterboard / baby bike / highchair