Little Blue Truck 1st Birthday Party

About two months before my son's first birthday party, I started seriously researching Pinterest for ideas and while I did come up with a few that I liked, none seemed to be quite right.  Then I thought of the idea of basing the party off the Little Blue Truck book and both my husband and I thought it was perfect for our little guy, since it is one of our favorite books and also has some inside jokes within our family.  From that point on, I began to do some hard-core internet research on Little Blue Truck party ideas and worked on designing the invitations.  Once I had my ideas together, I spent WAY too much time making the invites.  When they were finished, I was happy with how they turned out but I probably should have designed something a little simpler as free time with a one year old is quite limited.

The Invitation Front

The Invitation Inside

Once the invitations where out, I got to work making decorations, planning food, etc.  It was a lot of work and most people would probably say I went a little crazy, but I don't regret any of it.  Now that I finally have a little guy to celebrate, I wanted to make his birthday a moment (or collection of moments) to remember!

So...that is the background, now I'll share the results.

The watering hole: We served Lemonade Punch and Ice Water in Mason jars with blue striped paper straws.  I LOVED the way the straws and jars looked, but was disappointed due to the difficultly of actually drinking from the straws.  Using more than one helped because they were quite small in diameter, but after a while the paper got mushy and made it even more difficult to drink from...still SUPER cute though.

We also tied tags on all of the drinks so that everyone could write their name on them to distinguish which glass was theirs.

For the table decorations, I used a blue and white picnic tablecloth and made a runner from brown paper.  Then I placed vintage jugs and bottles on the runner with pictures from Asher's 1st year.

For the desserts, I decorated our side dining table with a small blue/white picnic runner and some old crates I had.  I also ran a string of binder twine above which I clothes-pinned the monthly pictures of of the birthday boy so that you could see how he changed through the year.

Our little guy had his own smash cake, which was a simple white cake with vanilla frosting.  I used 2 of the straws and made a little pennant banner to decorate it.

For the desserts, I made Million Dollar Cookies and decorated them with blue frosting and blue sugar.  Some of them say "Beep" to go with the story.  As you can see in the picture we also made little chalkboard signs for all of the food.  They aren't really chalkboard though.  I was going to paint them with chalkboard paint, but realized the night before that it would take 3 days to dry (obviously that wasn't going to work).  My husband spray painted pieces of masonite black and I wrote on them with chalk like normal...worked great!


My mom also made no-bakes for dessert, which I named "Mud Pies"

Finally, I made a bunch of cupcakes.  Originally I was hoping to make a Blue Truck cake or farm animal cake-pops, but decided that was going to be too much work and too stressful.  Instead, I made little pennants on my computer to decorate the cupcakes with.  You can't see it well in the picture, but they say, "'Beep!' said Blue", "'Oink!' said a piggy", etc.

You can't see it real well in this photo, but I also made little paper animals and trucks for every character in the story, each with his "noise" beside.  They took a lot of time, but I thought they were super cute and I got to enjoy more than a  few hours of Netflix while I made them, so it's all good!

I also made the giant 1 that is on the floor.  It was an idea I got from Pinterest, which I thought would be a cute photo prop, but ended up being more work than it was worth.  Oh well.

Since our house isn't that big, I was praying that the weather would cooperate during the party.  My hubby had worked hard to get our basement to a point that it was usable in case the weather was bad, but thankfully that wasn't necessary.  Although it did pour that morning and it was a little cool and windy during the party, the sun did come out and everyone spent most of the time outdoors in the back yard.

My husband made this little car for the kids to drive.  It turned out very cute.  I was a little bummed though, because I had wanted to get a picture of every kid/baby there "driving" it, but in the chaos of the actual party, that didn't happen.

We borrowed vintage milk pails from my uncle and inlaws to decorate the yard.

My husband got the idea of painting "1's" on the driveway leading to the backyard.  He found a recipe online for homemade chalkboard paint (made of water, corn starch and food coloring).  It turned out really cute and washed off quite well!

He also set up some games for our guests to enjoy in the driveway.

When 3pm came, our guests (big and small) began to arrive and the party was on...

I didn't get a great picture of it, but my mom and I also made Berry Blue popcorn and regular caramel corn take-home bags for our guests.  We tied tags on each that said "thanks for popping boy" with a picture of the Blue Truck and placed them on the bench (you can see them just below the pictures on the wall) in old fruit baskets that I found at a garage sale for 25 cents each.

My mom serving up the drinks!

My nephews taking the Little Blue Truck for a spin!

At 4pm, my mom and mother-in-law put out the dinner spread.  We served the orchard (fresh fruit), farm fresh veggies, chicken feed (chips), sloppy "stuck-in-the-mud" sliders, "cluck, cluck salad" (chicken salad), "spin your wheels" pasta salad, cheese and crackers, potato salad, candy apple salad, and baked beans (since the Little Blue Truck says "Beep Beep", I seriously considered calling the baked beans "Toot Toot"). Needless to say, there was a TON of food, and I really can't take credit for most of it.  A BIG thank you to my mom for making almost all of the food.  It was awesome and so are you!

I found these cute blue baskets at the front cheap-item section of Target.

The birthday boy happy to eat!

Smash Cake.

At 5pm, after everyone had eaten dinner, we sang Happy Birthday to our little guy and let him have a go at his first taste of sweets.  He wasn't quite sure what to do with his cake and although I think he did enjoy eating it, I think he enjoyed playing with it even more.  He had a great time and made a big mess.  It was perfect! :)

Finally, before the party was over my birthday boy got to open his gifts (well really, I opened them since he was exhausted and really didn't know what he was supposed to do anyway).  We had asked our friends to not bring gifts, since he really doesn't need anything and we didn't want people to feel obligated to bring stuff, we just wanted them to enjoy the day.  Still, many did not listen (which is fine), and he made out like a bandit.

His Papa made this for him based on my suggestion of a picture I had seen.  It turned out AMAZING!  Thank you Dad!

My husband and I couldn't resist getting him an actual Little Blue Truck for his birthday.  It was too cute to resist and he looks adorable driving it!  ...it even has a working horn and tailgate and is the perfect colors for a future Wolverine plate on the back! :)

In summary, it was a great day, a fun party and truly a moment I will cherish forever!