For the invitations I made a dinosaur stamp using several layers of funky foam mounted on corrugated card. I used ordinary acrylic paint to print them. Once dried, I glued on a google eye. I know it's a bit of a cheat, but I was short on time, so the wording was printed from the laptop and glued on using PVA (I know, I know, not the best choice, but it was all I could find and the invites had to be sent out you know!)
That was kind of the process for the whole thing - quick quick, birthdays coming, 5 minutes break from revision, quick quick....
The actual day was split into 2 parts on account of our house being designed to hold only a handful of people at once. In the morning his baby friends and their mummys and daddys came. Auntie Potato Salad Heather, who is one of his Godmothers was there too (the mummy and daddy of his little friend Ethan are also 2 of his Godparents, and they were there in double job capacity).
We just let them all loose in the living room to play. The smaller person actually did open a few presents on his own. He had a Vtech bike from mummy, daddy and his sister as a main present, then some clothes, a stuffed dinosaur from his sister, a few books and most importantly, a talking Nok Tok toy (from Waybuloo). From his friends and godparents he had some money, some cars, a jigsaw, some books, and some building blocks. He really doesn't know where to start with it all!
For decorations we used plain orange and plain blue balloons, and also some that were blue with 1's all over. I bought some blue first birthday banners, some blue first birthday dangly things to hang in the doorway (that Mr Bogert got really cross with because he kept tangling himself up in it!), and we bought some blue happy birthday bunting. I'm so glad I did because I intended to re-use the blue bunting from his christening, but we lent it out for a village event and now it can't be found : ( I will be very sad if it doesn't turn up. Hours of cutting, sewing and ironing went into the making of it. (and I want to re-use it for Alexandra's birthday party at the beginning of December). We also made use of the blue name banner I painted for his christening.
For food we put a small table with little finger food things for the babies. There were baby crisps and rice cakes, fruit pots and mini yoghurts, dinosaur shaped jam sandwiches, cut fruit and other bits and pieces. We put more out in the kitchen for the grown ups, nothing fancy, just some pizza slices, different sandwiches, pasta mix, and sweet things like danish pastries. I also baked some dinosaur shaped biscuits. I don't think I like the recipe though, think I'll try a different one next time.
In the afternoon we had family round, so Nana (my mum), Nanny (Mr Bogert's mum), Grandma and Grandpa (my nan and grandad), Grandad and Karen (my dad and his partner), Auntie Helen (Mr Bogert's sister), Auntie Steph (my sister), Auntie Amy and Joshua (my cousin and her son, who is also my Godson) and Uncle Matt, Lauran and Isobella (my cousin, his partner and her daughter). Auntie Heather stayed which was great - we put her to work in the kitchen! (Thanks Heather!)
He had more lovely toys (vtech things, clipo, thomas the tank, Yo Jo-Jo from Waybuloo, clothes, and dinosaur things) he has been a very lucky boy. The small person thought it was great because there were finally some children her size to play with, so they played in the garden (that needs a major overhaul by the way). I guess we were lucky it was dry and quite mild for the time of year. They'd have been very bored inside with the grown ups.
The cake was baked by Auntie Steph (I always try and rope her into the baking - she can bake, I can't) and then I decorated it. This was an evolving cake. The idea came to me as I hacked and stuck peices of chocolate cake together. The icing broke in several places because it was really hard to cover such an odd shape. I now refer to it as "Franken-dino" but at least it tasted OK! We had a big number one candle and some cake sparklers. He was very disinterested in the cake (even turned his back the first time we brought it out) but did rather like people singing to him.
For the goody bags I made some very quick tote bags from some sheeting fabric my nan gave me a while ago. I didn't have use of a zig-zag stitch, so I made enclosed seams to stop the fray. The ribbon handles are stitched into the double hem at the opening. The names were printed from the computer using the same font as some of the wording on the invitations. This was then placed under one layer of the fabric and traced over using a fabric pen, pink for the girls and blue for the boys. This was set with a hot iron. If I had had more time, I would have liked to use the same dinosaur stamp from the invitations with some fabric paint on the bags. (the girl dinos would have had little pink bows on their tails!).
The bags were filled for the babies with:
- "How do dinosaurs learn colours" book.
- dinosaur bath toy.
- white chocolate buttons.
- dinosaur biscuit
- small chocolate cake with orange icing
The bags for the older children were filled with:
- "how do dinosaurs go to school" book.
- plastic dinosaur toy.
- foam dinosaur glider.
- sheet of dinsaur stickers.
- dinosaur biscuit.
- freddo chocolate.
- small chocolate cake with orange icing.
I got a great deal on the books in The Works. The RRP was £2.99 but they were marked up as 99p each, then when I got to the till, they were buy one get one free at 99p! Yay for the bargains!
So it's all been and gone, my smaller person had a very busy day with all of his family and friends, and we'll have plenty of photographs to show him when he's older of just how he spent his very first birthday. No rest for the wicked though, I do believe a certain little miss turns 6 (6!?) in just over a months time, and so Wonderland is calling me...
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