It’s been about a month since we threw Jett’s first birthday and I’m so excited to share it with y’all! I couldn’t think of a theme and one day it just clicked and I ran with the whole surfer thing. We do live right by the beach, after all! You know we love neutrals around here, so I put a black and white spin on it and absolutely love how everything turned out. Jett and his cousins had so much fun, too! Keep reading for all of the details and I’m linking everything we used for the party, too!
We had a really small party at our house for Jett’s first birthday, so I wanted to make it look really cute since we weren’t going all out. I figured we would save the big parties for later in his life when/if he requests them! We just invited family and it was perfect (and no need for invitations)!
For the food, I went with brunch options since the party started at 11. Brunch food is also EASY and inexpensive! Win-win! The brunch cheese board was a huge hit, I wrote a whole post on it and made a shopping list so you can recreate it! I also got a few types of bagels, cream cheese, as well as some frozen appetizers I could just pop in the oven. The Parmesan Pastry Pups from Trader Joe’s were a HUGE hit! You can also pair them with Trader Joe’s garlic aioli mustard- so delicious.
Jett’s adorable “Yo I’m One” baseball tee came from Sandilake! They have all kinds of options depending on the color and the age of your child. I just love this shirt so much and it’s one he can wear over all summer. It’s a great lightweight and soft material too. He wore it with little sweatshorts from Target and his Vans crib shoes since he isn’t fully walking just yet.
As for the decor, the surfboard was a true labor of love and turned out completely different than what I had envisioned. It turned out even better! I was going to refinish a surfboard I bought off of Craigslist and paint a design on it, but the material I used to refinish the board started bubbling up. To cover and disguise the bubbles, I decided to use Polaroids of Jett to cover the surfboard and the final result was insanely CUTE! I bought the Fujifilm Instax printer and a 60 pack of Polaroid film on Amazon. The printer allows you to print photos from your phone onto Polaroid film which is so great for baby photos since they’re always moving and a real Polaroid is always blurry! If you aren’t into the idea of DIY’ing a surfboard, you could always get one of these super cute surfboard growth charts and use it as decor after the birthday is over!
For the balloon arch, I just used one of these simple balloon arch strips and it made it so easy! I did a whole post on the balloon arch here, so make sure you check that out.
For the table, I got these amazing marble cake stands from Target for the cake and his little smash cake. I made the cake out of Krispy Kreme donuts and it was super simple! I got 2 dozen donuts and it worked perfectly. I had to cut some of the donuts into quarters to fill in spaces. Buy 3 dozen in case your husband eats too many beforehand (LOL)! I got the palm leaves from Target as well although they don’t have them on their website and I’ve only seen them in one of their stores. They have artificial palm leaves this season at West Elm as well that are really pretty! All of the acrylic pieces are from Amazon and were easy to assemble. I like the modern touch it added to the table! The surfboard cheese board with black and white cookies on it was one of my favorite things on the table. It’s just so cute!
The party was the weekend after Jett’s official first birthday, but I wanted to share what I did for his birthday morning, too! Since I had already purchased the black and white beach balls for the party, the night before his birthday I blew a bunch of them up and put them in his crib when he woke up. I’ve seen people do this with balloons, but the beach balls were even better because they didn’t pop! You can see from the last two photos above that he had the TIME OF HIS LIFE! It was hilarious! The beach balls actually ended up being party favors too and my niece and nephew play with them every day- ha!
I can’t believe he’s already 13 months old now! Now I need to start thinking of the theme of his next birthday party! I hope you enjoyed this post, thanks for stopping by y’all!
Xo,
Haley