This past weekend we celebrated our sweet Penn with a social distance first birthday party! The theme was “One Happy Camper” and we had an absolute blast! I know lots of mamas look forward to celebrating their littles first birthday, I started dreaming up how I wanted to celebrate Penn when he was just 6 months old. LOL.
In todays blog post I am sharing how we pulled off a social distance first birthday party.
Lets break this party DOWN. ๐ย
- Prior to the party I sent informative texts to all invited about how we were going to pull this off, extra info always helps me and I think that this set the tone for how serious we were.
- We invited ONLY immediate family and great grandparents, a total of 19 people.
- We asked that everyone bring their own drinks.
- We ask that people stay out of the house except to use the facilities. The party was in the backyard.
- We were aware that little cousins were not going to be able to social distance, luckily for us the kids had all played together recently and my siblings were comfortable with them playing at the party.
The next two asks were the hardest for us and for our families.
- We ask people to sit in their respective “germ circle”- this means people you regularly saw during the stay at home order, and to social distance from others.
- Because of this rule we had tables go up to get food one at a time.
- We informed family that no one would be holding Penn but Keith or I, we couldn’t ask family to social distance and then pass the baby around. This one was hard because obviously everyone wanted to love on our little dude, and he loves to be cuddled and held especially by our parents.
Party Theme and Decor
I went with the happy camper theme for a couple of reasons, it would look really REALLY cute in the backyard and it fit well with Penn’s happy relaxed personality! Of course, I set up all of the decor and got busy with the party and didn’t snap any actual photos of the event. You can see a video of how it was set up on my IG story highlights, I did manage to get a video before the fun started. I am also including a mock up of how we spread out the tables, and eating areas to maximize space and social distancing.
For food, we did not do any “theme” food items, instead we opted to have some of Penn’s favorites as well as food that was easy to prepare and fresh out of our garden. We served smoked pork shoulder(pulled), homemade mac and cheese(Penn’s favorite), hot dogs, cucumber salad, and garden salad. I also had some potato chips and my grandpa made his famous potato salad for the event. I passed around hand sanitizer, but found that most people had brought there own!
I ordered all of the decorations from Amazon, I linked them below, and we did create some DIY tents for added play area and themed decor. I filled the tents with some blankets and random throw pillows from the house. I also emptied our kiddie pool of water and put some play ball pit balls in it as well as a couple of balloons, these were simple little things that Penn’s cousins had a lot of fun with. I love planning parties, and over the years have collected white linens in various sizes as well as simple white serving dish pottery. Whenever we have a party I haul them out and use as a base for whatever decor I have dreamed up. I have found that it always makes whatever I host feel elevated and special, you can find white pottery at HomeGoods and white linens CHEAP on Amazon.
My SIL is a professional baker(she’s @lovelylockescakes on IG), and made SMORES cupcakes for the group, I wanted to make Penn’s smash cake myself so I went with a double chocolate cake. I decorated it with some small plastic animals(found on Amazon) and some rosemary from our garden. It looked SO SO cute on my Magnolia cake stand and glass topper.
I hope this post is helpful to any new moms out there that are dreaming up a first birthday during this strange time! Feel free to reach out to me on Instagram with any questions!ย
So cute!!! What a fun way to celebrate
How fun for the whole family, even with the social distancing. It is hard, but at least you were able to be together and enjoy the celebration. Love the theme and he looks so cute. Can’t believe how fast they grow. – Amy
https://stylingrannymama.com/
This was so much fun to read and enjoy! I love what you did! I did stuff like this when my kids were little (my babies are 32, 34, 37)
He is adorable!!