It has been a roller coaster ride of excitement this first year of parenting! My son, Hunter Thor, was born July 10th, 2014 and like any other first time parent, I’ve had the most incredible, fun, scary, exhausting, beautiful experience getting to know my tiny human. So of course, I’ve been looking forward to celebrating his first birthday in style!

Every day has been a journey of discovery with our Lil Bub (as we affectionately refer to him), so it fit perfectly to celebrate both the first year of, and the beginning of the rest of that journey, using the World Awaits themed decorations!

We kept lunch light with a help-yourself sandwich buffet and the candy boxes actually made the perfect single-serving-sized holders for the chips. More of the DIY wrappers decorated the utensil jars as well. Keeping the food picnic style definitely made it easy to spend our time enjoying the party, rather than having to focus on serving food.

Of course, the centerpiece of the entire party was definitely the photo booth area we set up! A simple laundry hamper was quickly turned into a hot air balloon with just some string, balloons, and a little help from the triangle decoration kit! We used the luggage tag shaped paper cut outs and attached them to some streamers, with the adorable personalized banner to complete the backdrop. The photo booth prop kit was a hit with the whole family; even 15-year-old “Aunt” Katherine got in on the fun! To display the props, we just took some quart mason jars, filled them with old wine bottle corks, and wrapped the DIY party wrappers around them. They were so quick to put together and such a cute accent for the photos!

Hunter definitely enjoyed his party and all of the attention. I can’t wait for his second birthday! I’m already starting to make plans and I’m so looking forward to seeing what fun, new themes come out in the next year as we prepare to celebrate again.

-Elizabeth, Big Dot Hostess Hero