Maddy's 1st birthday was the day before Christmas. We just invited friends & family over (actually, it ended up being nearly 50 people over the course of the day) for a bbq and cake. We set up the paddle pool which was one of Maddy's birthday presents and all of the kids had fun splashing in there.
I have a huge family who would have been eternally offended if they had not been invited. there were minimum60+ people at Milos birthday.
I would have preferred close family, but all of my family live quite close, and our life would not have been worht living if they had not been invited.
If its outdoors make sure there is shelter (from sun or rain) or have a backup.
Ours was outdoors at a park so we just took a cricket set, footy etc for the older kids. We had a bbq.
I did do party bags - the younger kids got a fruit tub, baby prima and a balloon. the older kids got a colourfree icypole, balloon, fruit stick and bubbles.
We kept Sammy's fairly simple having learned from personal experience with the girls that simple is often better for them at this age and they will fall asleep after a while anyway. We had a teddy bear theme. We had a few kids bring their teddybears and Sammy and the girls had theirs. We played some dancing games and put hats on our teddybears and had some yummy food with our teddybears. The cake was a teddybear too. He loved it..loved all the balloons and decorations and paper lol....got into the toys a bit later.
For Jacob's first birthday in August we had a bbq dinner with family and friends. It was nice and relaxed. I even sent out home made invitations with his photo on them and printed out some thank you cards with his photo which my FIL kindly had laminated at work I see them now on people fridges when we go to visit
For Mackenzie's first birthday we had a balloon theme. I made up invitations on the computer then folded them up and put them in a balloon. Inside the envelope was instructions to blow the ballon up and pop them to find out all the details. The address labels on the invites had balloon pictures on them too. I made a cake (well 5 actually) and placed them on a board like a bunch of balloons with colourful ribbon coming from under each one. We had a big party with all friends and rellies. We ended up doing a spit which was fairly simple and a few salads. We also decorated the house with balloons and also about 11 helium ballons in one room which looked great. We also did a picture dvd of Mackenzies first year which was just running all day on the TV. It really wasn't that much work and we all had a great day.
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