Natalie's First Birthday-Minnie Mouse Themed

I have seen many ideas on Pinterest. Some feel very unrealistic to do for a full time working mom, and some are reasonable. I had a lot of fun creating the decor for my daughter's party.

My mom was awesome, and cooked most of the food. My husband cooked the delicious tri-tip and helped where ever needed. I was so thankful to have help! I would definitely recommend getting help!

I had seen many ideas with Minnie Mouse cupcakes, where stick mini-oreos as the ears, and come up with a bow out of fruit roll up, or something. I figured this would be easier because I didn't want to curl many bows. We used black frosting tubes for the Minnie Mouse shapes, and a red sparkly tube for the bow. It took about 45 minutes to do all the cupcakes. I am sure the bow and oreos probably takes the same amount of time, but I already had black frosting tubes, and no mini-oreos or fruit roll up! Just seemed easier!
The gift bags were also fun to make. We found minnie/mickey sippy cups for the younger kids, and minnie/mickey insulated cups for the older kids. I also got crayons and bubbles too. I purchased plain red bags, and labeled the bags with each kids' name that was coming. I added a plain mickey head to add to the decor!

My aunt is awesome. She was shopping at Costco and saw the giant Minnie, and got if for Natalie since she knew she was having a Minnie Mouse birthday party. We used it as gift table decor. My mom also joined in and got Natalie her first set of Minnie ears with her name, and Minnie Mouse shoes (that she would have worn, had they fit, but they turned into good decor).
For the food table we had a bit of fun! The bowl we got were plain black bowls, and we set them up as Mickey heads. The cookie jar you see in the top left corner was already given to me. The plates & napkins we got at Party City.

Then Natalie had a "visit" from Minnie Mouse. She signed the table (meaning I took her signature off the internet and used that to write happy birthday to her! :)

Now, I did get this 1 idea off of Pinterest. We had a photo shoot with my daughter the week before, and used those photos to create the one. I took a poster board and drew out a one, then I realized I could just placed the pictures in a one. I just had to cut down a few photos with my photo cutter I already had. I used double sided to get the pictures to stick. I loved the 1 so much that it is now hung up in my daughters room.

This was another thing I saw on Pinterest. I got the balloons from Party City. They cut the string really long, so I had to figure out how to put these balloons onto the pictures. I decided to tape the pictures to scrap booking paper, then I hole punched (I had a Mickey hole punch, so stinkin' cool) the paper. I strung the string through the two holes and tied them to themselves to get the balloons to the same height. Then the pictures started kind of floating oddly. So, I had to tape the bottom of the scrapbook paper to the table, and the balloons just kept the pictures up.

There were some simple decor ideas. A first birthday is fun! We kept it simple. We had good food, fun decor, cake, and opened presents. Then we just let the kids play in the backyard, and we were able to hang out and chat as parents. It was a fun, fun birthday!