Sarah's Flamingo First Birthday Party

When I was still pregnant with Sarah, sweating away in the joy that is August in Phoenix, I decided that I wanted a flamingo first birthday for my still unborn baby girl. Flash forward a year later and that dream has been made a reality! We were able to celebrate our sweet girl this past weekend and I’m so excited to share how everything turned out with you today. Get ready for an overload of cuteness!

Before we dig in to all of the details, I have to share a shameless photo of my sweet Sarah Bells. She is such a happy baby and has been such a blessing in our family. She’s one tall, skinny girl who has the best gummy smile and the best hair with some curl to it. She has lashes for days, is working on learning to walk, and lights up when her brother and sister walk in the room. We love her!

Now back to why you’re here: her Flamingo First Birthday Party!

I knew I wanted to create a high-impact entry way to welcome our guests to our home and create a memorable impression, so I used some fairly inexpensive paper fans and a large piece of canvas art to make the entry pop. The canvas art will be making a permanent home in Sarah’s room now that the party is complete.

The flamingo party would never have been complete without Petite Party Studio’s adorable printable Pink Flamingo party printables. Seriously. From the food labels that I used not only for food, but for helpful signs sprinkled around the party, to the thank you notes, it help tied the theme of the party together.

I filled paper treat bags with a few pieces of candy and tied it off with a piece of coordinating twine and the Flamingo thank you tags. It was so simple and the kids were thrilled.

I wanted a way to share our first family picture as a way to commemorate her actual birth day and Shutterfly’s desktop plaque was a great to create a lasting memory that we can re-use elsewhere now that the party is done. It’s actually already found it’s final resting place in my husband’s office at work.

Because it’s ridiculously hot and gross outside right now, I decided to hold the party earlier in the day — 10 AM on a Saturday! — to avoid the severe heat. With the party being so early in the day, I didn’t have a lot of food out; I kept it to cupcakes and an ice cream sundae bar. Petite Party Studio’s party circles and cake decor were the perfect addition.

I used my own tutorial on how to make a mini cake to create Sarah’s smash cake and you’ll see how much she liked it a little further on in this post. I placed it on a personalized buffalo check plate, again from Shutterfly, to incorporate more pattern and texture into the display. Plus, it was so much easier to just pick up a plate and put it on her tray versus having to someone finagle her cake off of the cake stand.

I used more of the desktop plaques throughout the party to share some of my favorite pictures of my girl with her party guests.

Sarah loved her smash cake. She happily ate away much longer than my first two ever did on their first birthdays. Sweet girl isn’t afraid of getting a little messy!

Now that her party has wrapped up, I’m hard at work on finishing up the thank you notes. Thankfully the amazing girls at Petite Party Studio were okay with me using their thank you card design to create a stunning card from Shutterfly to send to our guests. The picture on the inside and the stripes on the back make me so happy!