Teddy Bear Picnic

I cannot believe that Caroline will turn 1 on Sunday. Where has the year gone? As typical in our family, she will actually have 2 birthday parties, one for friends and one for family. It may be crazy to plan 2 parties but if I had only 1 it would be way too big. I enjoy having a family party by itself so that the grandparents actually get to spend time with the birthday girl.

Our friend party was last Saturday. We did the party with a friend whose daughter, Laurie Jane turns 2 this month. We have a lot of the same friends so it worked well.

Our theme was a Teddy Bear Picnic. Here is the cute invitation designed by ProffitProductions on etsy. She was super fast and very cheap.

Laurie Jane and Caroline are excited about the party. Well, Caroline does not like to show much excitement for the camera but she could tell something big was going on.

We decorated using red and white as well as blue and white tablecloths and lots of teddy bears.

We had wagons with ribbon on the front porch for guests to put the girl' presents.

The guests brought their own lunch. We had some snacks as well.

The cake was actually made up of 14 cupcakes using the Wilton Puzzle Cake set. Luckily the teddy bear was the example on the box. I thought it turned out really cute. Because we had more guests than cupcakes in that teddy bear cake, I also made individual teddy bear cupcakes. Their nose and ears are mini vanilla wafers, their eyes are chocolate chips and their nose is black icing.

We had red favor bags and I found some cute red and white name tags at a teacher store. The favors had a bag of teddy grahams, gummy bears, stickers and a notepad. I was going to burn CD's full of kids songs with bears in them but the week of the party my computer crashed and I lost all of my itunes library.

Since the party was for a one and two year old, there were lots of adults and kids of all ages so we did not have any games or activities. The kids played with all of the toys and because the weather was in the upper 90's we also had swimming.

When it was time for cake, Caroline wore her special 1st birthday hat that I made. When I made it, I did not realize how big it was or how top heavy it would be. I saw a lot of cute hats on etsy as well but was not going to pay $25 for the one I wanted. So, I kind of copied it.

We did smash cake photos 2 weeks ago so Caroline already knew that cupcakes are yummy. She was not shy in eating hers.

After most of the guests left and we had cleaned up most of the mess we let the girls open their presents. Caroline was not as sure about what to do. She liked the paper of course and after opening one present she just wanted to play with it.

It was a wonderful party and we all had a fun time. This weekend we will have her family party with a lady bug theme.

If you stopped by from Kelly's Korner, thanks for reading about my Teddy Bear Picnic.