Cheap Easy 1st Birthday Party

This is not a "How To Throw A Cheap Easy 1st Birthday Party" post... I'm sure there are plenty of those out there.
I'm sure you could think of even better ways to save money and to add fun details to your child's birthday party.

This is simply a post about how I did it.

And I'm sure I probably saved money in ways that you might not be able to (I chose a theme that I already had plenty of decorations for, and found several great deals along the way). In fact, maybe some of my "cost-cutting" strategies are things you would never do... (I am not above shopping at thrift stores and yard sales!) 

But I just wanted to share our experience in case this gives you a little inspiration. My goal is just to show that it is possible to have a fun 1st birthday party WITHOUT spending a lot of money or taking a lot of time in preparation.

1. Theme

My husband and I were "those weird people" who decided not to find out the gender of our child before he was born. So, about  year and 9 months ago, we had to choose a gender-neutral nursery theme. (Bonus saving money strategy-- now we can re-use all our baby things when we have more kids someday!) 

So the theme we chose was giraffes.

Why? Well, I have been collecting giraffes since I was a little kid, so I already had TONS of giraffe stuff. Also, there is a TON of cute giraffe baby stuff out there for both boys AND girls. It is a little bit more gender-neutral than just plain "jungle theme" (note: giraffes actually do not live in the jungle. just FYI.) although we still got a ton of jungle/monkey/zoo type items anyway, which worked perfectly since our child turned out to be a boy. And all that stuff can still can be used for a girl-- we'll just put a little pink in there. :-)

So, when choosing a theme for the birthday party, it was easy to know where to start! The baby shower had been animal themed, so why not make this party animal themed? 

Then... we found our venue, which I will talk about next.

2. Venue

Ok, so the venue actually kind of came BEFORE the party theme. 

Quite a few months before his birthday, I had been looking on the Milwaukee Zoo website to see when their "free days" are. My husband and I like going to zoos, and there are a lot of great free ones out there! (Around us, there is the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago-- which we haven't been to yet because it is a bit of a drive... and the Henry Villas Zoo in Madison which we have been to several times since we moved to WI.) 

But I happened to know that the Milwaukee Zoo hosts several "family free days" each year (my husband and I had been to one before) so I was checking to see when they were in 2013 so we could maybe take our son when he got a bit older. 

Lo and behold, the fall free day was on the Saturday before his 1st birthday!

Perfect. 

Now we have a theme, and a venue. 

And I think a zoo is a perfect venue for a birthday party because: 

a) You don't have to plan much in the way of decorations

b) You don't have to plan ANY games or activities

c) It's something that adults AND kids/babies can enjoy (Isn't a 1st birthday party really about the adults anyway? I mean, I'm glad our son loved it, but he's not going to remember this day, so we might as well spend it doing something WE enjoy, too)

3. Invitations

This party was just kind of falling together for me. I didn't have a checklist of "How To Do A Birthday Party" because birthday parties weren't really a big deal for our family growing up. We did a couple (I remember at least one sleepover party for the girls' birthdays) but when you have 4 siblings and you live far away from your cousins... birthday parties are really just a "Mom makes a cake and gives presents after dinner" sort of thing. So that's kind of what I planned to do for our son's birthdays. 

BUT since we decided to go to the zoo, I thought it might be fun to invite some people. I already knew the grandparents wanted to come (unfortunately MY parents weren't able to make it, but my husband's parents came up) and we have a couple friends with young kids at church whom we like to do things with. So, I thought I should probably do some sort of invitations. 

Once I decided on the details, I made a couple invitations to hand out. 

Then, about a month before the party, I got a coupon for FREE invitations from Shutterfly (see one of my previous blog posts for that story) so I thought, "What the hey? Why not send some invitations to our family members who are far away?" Even though I knew they probably couldn't make it, it made ME happy to send them a cute little invitation. The grandparents loved it. :-)

(For privacy reasons, I took out the event and RSVP details)

4. Menu

Since we planned to do the zoo trip in the early afternoon, I wanted to provide lunch for our guests. I picked an easy picnic lunch menu that would be cheap, with little clean-up. Just deli sandwiches, chips, soda, and fruit salad. (For the fruit salad, I chose our son's 3 favorite fruits-- melon, raspberries, and bananas. He pigged out.)

I wanted to get Zoo Plates for the picnic, but Walmart was all out, so I settled on regular paper plates (that I already had) and Zoo Bowls for the fruit salad.

5. Cupcakes

I have ZERO cake decorating skills. I even attended a cupcake decorating workshop once and I still have no idea what I'm doing. So, again, I wanted something with easy clean-up and almost no prep work. I found an idea for "zoo cupcakes" on Pinterest that just have an animal cracker standing in a field of green sprinkles. (Okay, I can do that.) 

Made them with white cake and white icing so I didn't have to worry about staining any clothes. I had received a cupcake tree as a secret-Santa gift last Christmas, so I was glad to use it. Also, those animal print cupcake liners were just too cute. (Thank you, Walmart)

I have also seen a lot of little "cake banners" floating around on Pinterest, so I thought that would make a nice "zoo" sign. Planned to just use two wooden skewers and a piece of beading string, but my son took a longer nap that day, so I kept adding little beads and scrapbooking stickers that I had around. But all my embellishments made the banner a little too heavy to stick in the cupcakes, so I had to improvise. (Good thing I happen to own giraffe salt and pepper shakers!)

6. Party Favors

Are you getting the idea that I am just making this up as I go along? Good.

I wasn't really planning to do party favors (it's not like we were expecting a lot of guests, and I had told the guests on the invitations that we did not expect gifts... my son has more than he needs!) but then I happened to see the cutest little favor bags at a thrift store for 25 cents. They were new-- apparently the previous owner just didn't need the whole package-- and they had zoo animals wearing party hats!

So, I passed them by, telling myself I couldn't justify that kind of expense.

NOT.

They were obviously too cute so I had to get them. :-)

Now I just had to find a couple things to fill them! (That's what the Dollar Tree is for.)

I think I spent $2-3 on 5 party favors.

The little white bag is jungle animal fruit snacks. I didn't know from the package that the individual bags would be so plain, so I found some animal print stickers in my scrapbooking stuff to "pretty" them up a bit. Not every bag was the same, but they all had a couple cute little zoo themed items in them.

7. Decorations

Like I said before, we are going to the zoo, so I didn't need much. But, at the last minute, our plans changed a little. The weather was a little rainy in the morning and some of our guests couldn't make it to the zoo till a bit later, so we decided to do our picnic at the house and THEN go to the zoo (It worked out perfectly because it rained on the way up and the way back but was perfect weather while we were there. Which is wonderful for WI in November... the week before we had a snow flurry!)

So I "had" to decorate the house a little for our picnic. :-) Easy to do because most of what I own is giraffe themed. 

(note: I even served the drinks in giraffe glasses... I didn't think to take a picture of these because they are actually the glasses we use for dinner most nights at our house. Yep. We're a little different...)

My husband laughed at me as I was cutting out party hats for my son's toys the night before. 

Yes, my son's party guests are toys and a picture of himself. But come on... do you really know any one-year-olds whose best friends DON'T consist of themselves and a few stuffed animals??

Another last minute decoration decision... my old Junior Zookeeper vest from Zoo Camp back in the day. (Not something I expect most of you have lying around the house... but I did!)

Our dog's birthday had been a couple days before, so we had to add her to the fridge. The "crossword" look is because we didn't have enough h's, y's, and l's.

8. Party Day

Finally the day came! I turned on some toddler songs on Pandora, dressed our son in his most safari/zookeeper-like outfit and we had a great time. 

My husband picked up a helium balloon at the Dollar Tree that morning.

He had a blast at the zoo! There were plenty of places to crawl and get close to the animals, but it was also was very stroller friendly for mom-and-dad sanity.

Thanks for reading!