Owl Birthday Party

Today I thought I’d share our littlest girl’s first birthday party.  I am a big fan of big first birthday parties.  SO much happens in the first year of a little one’s life so I say celebrate it!

I’m also a big fan of theme parties…those who know me well are probably rolling their eyes right now.  That’s an understatement.  I all caps LOVE theme parties.  When she was born, Nora was given an oh-so-special homemade owl quilt by my dear hubby’s Aunt Chris.  It’s a masterpiece and deserved a whole party designed around it.  So, for Nora’s first birthday we had a hootin’ good time at an owl themed party!

My sister Stevi (a graphic designer) helped me make these invitations.  J’adore!

Here’s a picture of the quilt.  You’ll notice it’s the background of the invitation pictures, too.  Gorgeous, no?!  Aunt Chris is truly an artist.

I asked if Aunt Chris could send me the scraps from the owl quilt and got my wonderful MIL, Jan, to help me make a onesie to match.  I just traced & cut out Aunt Chris’s design onto the pieces of scrap fabric.  Then Jan told me about this nifty product called Wonder Under.  Sounds a bit naughty, doesn’t it?  Turns out it’s this magic stuff that makes fabric stick together without sewing it!  You only need an iron!  Talk about up my non-sewing alley.

Jan and I cut the Wonder Under in the same shape as the owl then she ironed everything together onto a long sleeved onsie.  Obviously, I’m no seamstress or there would be much more technical expertise here….words like me “seam” or “selvage edge.”  Eeek!  Those things scare me.  I was looking for a quick, easy way to make a shirt for baby girl to wear once.  Wonder Under did the trick!  I had more than enough with 1/4 a yard from our craft store.

Jan (aka: Nini to the kids) also took some of the leftover fabric and made this sweet bib to match.  She’s got mad skills.

For Nora’s hairbow I tore approximately 1/3″ x 2″ strips from the fabric scraps and knotted them around an alligator clip.  I’ve since learned to make better hairbows.  I’ll post a tutorial about those later!

Next, the decorations.  I made a DIY Happy Birthday Burlap Banner. The method to my madness deserves it’s own post as well.  Let’s just say you need a quick trip to your local craft store and an evening to yourself.  Check back soon for further instructions.  You’ll notice that I added more scraps of the fabric as ties between each letter.  I told you I love me a good theme party!

Moving onto the centerpieces.  Where do owls hang out?  Trees, of course!  We have tons of beautiful, old trees in our yard.  Those trees drop lots of branches.  Those branches make for awesome art projects, these centerpieces included.  For the centerpieces I just gathered up bunches of fallen branches and put them into Mason jars.  The Mason jars were from my grandmother’s collection and added special meaning to the big day.  Their aqua tint was perfect with the owl quilt!

Speaking of aqua, my favorite part of Aunt Chris’s quilt is all the colors.  Seriously fabulous.

I wanted to bring a lot of them into the decor so I searched high and low for colorful owls to use in the centerpieces.  I found these!  They’re technically bookmarks but I just cut them out, taped a looped piece of raffia to them, and hung them on the branches.  Wait.  I should say my SISTER did all that.  Somehow, she always gets those jobs.  Thanks, Stevi!  It takes a village.  Anyway, centerpieces — check!  (Just watch your eyeballs when you sit down) 😉

I wanted a little something for all the big kids at the party to do while the grown-ups chatted.  I loved this idea from Parties for Pennies.  I had a bakset of toilet paper tubes, squares of tissue paper, colorful googly eyes, wings cut from the quilt fabric scraps, decopage, glue, and paintbrushes.  I made a “how-to” sign in Microsoft Word to place on the craft table.  And away they went!  You can see the carnage below.  I only got a picture of the table after the owls were made.  There’s one hanging out in the background of this picture.  Whooo-whooo!

Then came the food.  We had a kid friendly menu including things like mac-n-cheese, meatballs, and of course CUPCAKES!  Tying in the owls again I used this picture from Cutest Food as inspiration.  I made dark chocolate cupcakes topped with vanilla buttercream icing (see my post about Nora’s second birthday for the recipe).  My nephew, Zack, helped me open up Oreos to use as the base for the owls’ eyes.  I know, Oreos are not the most natural or organic food but what they lack in homemade goodness they make up for in googly-eyed appearance!  And they’re delicious!  (Ooof, the dietitian in me just shuddered.)

When the Oreo halves were in place I added two chocolate M&M-type candies from Whole Foods as the pupils.  What I love about these candies is that 1. they’re all natural and 2. they come in a mix of dark brown, yellow, orange, and pink.  Perfect for the colors at this party!  We smooshed one more on its side into the buttercream for a perfect beak.

Because we have some nut allergies in our circle of family and friends I skipped the slivered almond part of my cupcake inspiration picture.  They still turned out great, though!  Note: If you’re using a cupcake stand, the big, owl eyes may not fit next to each other.  We just made every other cupcake (that we put on the stand) without the Oreos.

Nora wasn’t feeling all that great on her first birthday but she was a sport despite that!  With all eyes on her she tenatively tried out her cupcake, thanks in-part to help from her big sis.  Happy first birthday, sweetheart!