The Wild ONE

For Charlotte's first birthday, we wanted to have a small local gathering of family and close friends to help celebrate this milestone. I wrote previously about the pressures of our society's birthday party expectations, and we wanted to keep it simple and focused on the main event - celebrating our daughter's first year of life!

I love a good theme party [see our March Maternity Madness gender reveal party], and so we wanted a theme that reflected our daughter's personality traits - fun, passionate, brave, and adventurous.  A frilly, pink, super-girly princess party simply wouldn't do for this bold little lady. 

The theme we came up with? 

"The Wild ONE"!

We planned a "Jungle Brunch" on a Saturday morning so that we wouldn't interfere too much with nap schedules for our smallest guests and our little lady of honor. Also, by having an early celebration, it left the weekend wide open for resting and celebrating as a family.

The birthday girl wore a "Wild ONE" outfit with a gold tutu and leopard headband, all from Etsy. The birthday girl's momma wore a matching headband, because it won't be long before matching will be so uncool ; )

Brunch included Charlotte's favorite foods - an assortment of breakfast casseroles and fruit, along with doughnut holes for the kids. Milk, juice, and tea completed the spread.  My husband made a strawberry smash cake with cream cheese frosting for the birthday girl as well as cupcakes for guests.

Leopard print adorned my handmade invitations, paper lanterns, and other DIY decor scattered throughout the party.   Animal print balloons on our mailbox welcomed guests, and styrofoam jungle animal hats awaited Charlotte's friends upon entering the party.

Instead of buying the framed prints I had my eye on, I simply made replicas in a Word document, printed them, and gathered picture frames from around the house to display them on the food table.

Bubbles and sidewalk chalk entertained our smallest guests in the backyard while friends and family enjoyed brunch on the sunny patio and mingled inside the house. It was a simple, wonderful celebration of our girl with some of the people who have been most involved in her life!

When it was time for cake, Charlotte wasted no time in plunging face-first into her frosted smash cake. It was her first real taste of sweets, and she immediately showed her approval as she resurfaced from the cake with white frosting on her nose, a toothy grin, and said "Mmmmmm!" In typical Charlotte fashion, she proceeded to clap for herself as laughter filled the room.

Altogether, it was a perfect celebration of our girl! Keeping things simple, we minimized costs by making the decor and food ourselves, and we kept the focus on the most important thing: honoring one wildly wonderful year of life and the people who enriched it most!