We celebrated Man Cub's birthday with a Monster Mash First Birthday Bash. This party has been in the works since around the time Man Cub was born. As his first birthday got closer and closer, I contemplated changing the theme but Beebs was insistent that it be a monster party. I am oh-so glad we stuck with it! It was amazing. The party itself was a blast, but even all the prep work was lots of fun. Of course, I had a super cute assistant helping me every step along the way...
The Invitations
This invitation might be my most favourite design ever. I've come a long way since I first started using Photoshop and I'm pretty impressed, with myself and the software, for what we were able to create together. I drew each of these monsters in Photoshop and fell so in love with them that I used them every place possible. They were the star of the invite, I made them into a banner to hang above the cake table, they adorned the "Adopt a Monster" basket and a few even made an appearance on the "thank you" tags for the party favours.
The Menu
I knew that I wanted to focus my efforts on the activities and favours for the party, so I kept the menu simple. We ordered subs from our local health food store. I put together a veggie tray and a spinach salad and Bruce made a monster fruit salad. Lemonade and water to drink. As my girls love to say- easy peasy lemon squeezy.
The Decorations
The decorations were also relatively simple. I found some bright coloured streamers and spinners at the store and that made up the bulk of the decor. I hung my monster banner, then added multiple monster eyes to everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING possible.
The Cake
I am a big fan of cupcakes for birthday parties, and the girls and I found monster cupcakes in our What's New, Cupcake book many moons ago. We were really excited to try creating them for Man Cub's party. They turned out awesome! At the last minute I decided I wanted Man Cub to have his own smash cake, so I put some leftover batter into one of my Pampered Chef prep bowls and turned the baked cake into a monster as well. These cupcakes took less than two hours to put together and frost. They looked great and tasted yummy too. Man Cub was definitely a fan.
The Birthday Boy Attire
I wanted Man Cub to have something monster-y to wear to his party, but making him a party outfit was not high on my priority list. Luckily, I was able to find an adorable monster t-shirt at Kohls... which I never managed to get a good picture of! Just trust me when I say, he looked really cute!
The Guests
We are grateful that many of our closest family members and friends were able to celebrate with us. I kept the guest list small this time around and it was just perfect. Man Cub was not overwhelmed by the crowd and had a lot of fun playing with the children who attended.
The Activities
I knew we'd have lots of wee ones running around at the party and I wanted to provide them with something fun to do. I settled on a "mold-a-monster" activity in our preschool room and it was so much fun to watch the kiddos create. I provided the children with a few different colours of homemade play dough, goggly eyes, and pieces of pipe cleaner and plastic straws and their imaginations ran wild.
The Party Favours
And now for my favourite part of the entire party... the favours! I have an amazing friend who is beyond talented in so many ways. She is my go-to girl for anything I need crocheted (like the cute matching beanies I got for Bruce and Man Cub last Christmas). Recently, she has started doing embroidery so I enlisted her help to create little monster softies for each of the children to adopt. They turned out fantastic. Dawn did a phenomenal job embroidering the adorable monster faces on fleece, then I created monster bodies and cut them out. My neighbor is a great seamstress and she came over one afternoon and helped me get them all sewn together and we ended with these...
How cute are they!?!? I love them and the wee ones who attended the party had so much fun adopting their monsters.
The adults got something a little different... a tastier take on adopting a monster!
Celebrating Man Cub with a Monster Mash First Birthday Bash was so much fun. The party turned out better than I could have imagined and I can honestly say I enjoyed every moment of planning, preparing and partying. Some parties have been stressful to pull off, but this one was 100% fun all around.
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