First Trip Around the Sun
How cute is my precious little nephew Jace!?! He really is the sweetest kid with a cool, laid back temperament and dreamy smile. While I can’t believe how fast his first birthday came, I was tickled to be able to help my sister-in-law Hailey with the decorations for his small, family party. Hailey has amazing style. Their home is adorable, the kids always have the cutest clothes and her own personal style is always on point. It was not a surprise that she had already picked out amazingly cute party decorations to go with the First Trip Around the Sun theme.
Cindy & I got to make some fun balloon art for the party!
We were able to re-use the cardboard “1” from Blair’s Bee Day celebration for Jace’s party. The large “1” frame was made with a template from the Creative Hearts studio. Their work is amazing and Cindy posts about how she made the frame for Blair’s Bee Day. We created a color scheme to match Jace’s party and filled it with different color balloons in various sizes.
With this particular arrangement, we creates a matte blue by placing a bright blue ( the same as the 4th of July arrangement here) and stuffed it inside a white balloon with the eraser side of a pencil. A hand balloon pump was used to blow up the double stuffed balloons. Small balloons were in the soft yellow, a light peach color, gold and the matte blue. We had larger balloons in the peach and matte double stuffed blue.
Once we had quite a few balloons of different sizes and colors blown up, we started attaching them to the cardboard frame with low temperature hot glue and glue dots. The hot glue seemed to work best when it was placed on the cardboard, then the balloon was placed against the glue and held for a few seconds. Once we filled the frame with balloons of all sizes and shapes, we went back and used glue dots to add small round balloons on the outside to add dimension and ideal color arrangement. To get the small balloons a round shape, I would blow them up to the full size and then let air out so that I could manipulate the shape to be more round before tying.
For the balloon arch, we started with the larger 11 or 12 in. balloons. we take two balloons and tie them together at their ends. Once you have created two doubles you twist them together in the center and tie them off with the balloon ends to create clusters. Pliable fishing line is used to attach several clusters of big balloons together into the arch shape. The same technique is used with the 5 in. balloons to create smaller clusters that are glued to the arch once it is hung with glue dots. I add these small clusters on each end of the larger arch and then throughout the inside.
I used push pins and fishing line to hang the balloon arch against the wall but you could also use Command Strips like these light clips.
The weather was lovely the day of the party so most of the food was outside, but this adorable dessert table displayed Jace’s Birthday Facts, had yummy space themed candies, cookies and cupcakes. Hailey found a stone blue table cloth at the party store that matched the galaxy color of the other decorations and then we decorated the table with a gold and silver, moon and stars garlands. We also used a shiny strip of a silver foil textured tablecloth we cut from a whole disposable tablecloth to add light and contrast to the blue. She used both wood and white serving pieces and candy in adorable white star candy dishes.
Hailey had a local cookie baker called Crumbs & Company make adorable themed sugar cookies that matched the party decorations. Hailey’s parents also have a special tradition for making cakes for each of their kids and grandchildren and do such a lovely job so the sunshine smash cake was extra special.
The First Trip Around the Sun customized Birthday Party pieces are from Prettiest Print Shop on Etsy. Hailey mentioned they were great to work with and were open to making color changes to the design to fit with her sunnier vision. The shop has a collection of adorable things, but Hailey selected the customized Printable Outer Space Backdrop Poster and had it printed at Costco. She also had used the Outer Space High Chair Banner, Outer Space Birthday Cupcake Toppers, First Trip Around the Sun Stats Poster, and First Trip Around the Sun Birthday Invitation.
Hailey added Jace’s month photos to this adorable Month by Month Banner by Naomis Gift Bucket. It made such a nice addition to the celebration and was so fun to look back at how much the sweet birthday boy had changed over the course of the year. All Hailey had to do was have the monthly photos she took printed and attached them to this cut out banner. We decided to hang the “one” mylar balloon behind, but it looked super cute hanging together.
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