We just celebrated my son’s first birthday and we had the best time! We went with a farm theme and I loved getting to pull out my more creative side to add some fun touches. But no need to feel intimidated if you’re not the creative type, because I also leaned on my best friend Amazon for a lot of cute additions as well!
Naming Your Theme
So you know you want to do a farm theme, now it’s time to come up with your tag line! The line that will be on the invitation and give the overall vibe. We used “Holy Cow, ___ is One!” This could be used with any age too! A few other ideas could be “Oink, Moo, Cock-a- Doodle-Doo”, “Calling all Party Animals!”, “Start Your Tractor and Get in Gear”, “Lil’____ Had A Farm E-I-E-I-O”.
Choosing an Invitation
Once you’ve got your theme nailed down you can begin searching for an invitation to go with it, or designing your own! My favorite place to look for personalized invitations is Etsy. They have so much cute ones! Some can be mailed to you already printed and others are digital files that you edit yourself and print locally. I grabbed one of the digital files and printed it at my local staples (envelopes were included with the printing cost). Here are a few of my favorite farm invites!
Decorations
For our farm theme I wanted to stick with the color palette of red, black, white and yellow. If you’re leaning more tractor/farm you may want some green instead of the red. We were going more with barns and cows so these colors worked best for us. I also wanted to keep the themed decorations pretty simple. This is because I had some personalized things I wanted to do as well! So I went with red and yellow balloons and this awesome party pack from Amazon. I tied the balloons to our mailbox and then scattered around the outside party space. The party pack included a perfect banner and adorable table cloths to push home that theme. There were also photo prop pieces included. We didn’t use these but they’d be a fun addition! I also picked up two more tablecloths from Walmart that fit the theme with red checks.
If you’re looking for a few more decor ideas you could add mason jars with some daisies or sunflowers to your tables/party space. You could also consider instead of just simple balloons, you could make a balloon arch or custom order some balloons that match the theme like different farm animals.
Make it Personal
Particularly since this was a first birthday I knew I wanted a few personalized touches. So I tuned into my more crafty side to add a few extra pieces of decor to the party. I made this DIY photo collage in the shape of a one. I had initially intended to make one pretty large one but didn’t have large enough cardboard. So I made two smaller (but still large) ones an placed them in two separate places in the space. It is super simple, anyone can do it! I got the tips from this blog here.
A Few More Personal Touches
I also decided that I would make a high chair garland. You can certainly buy one of these but I decided to go for it and I’m glad I did, I loved how it turned out! I grabbed 4 different fabrics from my local Walmart-1 yard of each and had PLENTY leftover. Then I used twine to keep it together. Next, I cut lots of strips of each fabric. Then I attached a burlap pennant using hot glue to the center of my twine. After the pennant was attached I just went one by one knotting the strips of fabric to the twine in a pattern. I added a “1” using black vinyl and voila! Whether you make it or buy it a high chair garland makes for some cute pictures with the cake and helps things feel extra festive!
The last personal touch I added was a milestone banner. I had taken monthly milestone photos of my son and I wanted to display the progression. I got my idea from some photos on Pinterest and decide I could make little barns to attach each picture to. Again, if crafts aren’t your thing there are premade options to purchase but if you have a little time and patience you can make it too!
I used cardstock to make templates for the barn, roof, and door. I then cut 14 of each (1 for each month, plus a newborn photo and an extra). After cutting all the pieces I used a glue gun to attach the roof and door to the barn. Then used a black sharpie to add detail to the door. I printed the numbers using a block font to keep them looking uniform and then glued to the front. I then glued each picture I had to a barn and then glued the barns to more twine.
What to Do?
We were having a wide variety of ages at this party. A lot of the friends that would be attending had older siblings and so we knew we needed something to do to keep people entertained. We didn’t want to do games or anything organized like that because it didn’t seem like the babies could participate. So we opted for a mobile petting zoo! Many mobile petting zoos are farm animals so it fit the theme perfectly! And the kids loved it! We had the animals for an hour and kids were able to pet and wander around with them all they wanted. All of the different ages enjoyed it and I definitely recommend it! Get a recommendation from your local mom Facebook group if you’re looking for options in your area.
Time to Eat!
Our party was around lunchtime so we wanted to offer food. But we didn’t want to be cooking or managing food while we had guests. So we did BBQ, hot dogs and sides that could all be prepared ahead of time. My husband smoked two pork shoulders the day before, grilled the hot dogs the morning of and our moms made cole slaw, potato salad, cut up a watermelon and put out chips. It was easy to make ahead and just grab it when we were ready to eat. We had paper plates, cups and napkins from our party kit as well!
And what’s a party without cake? If you live near a Publix I can’t recommend their bakery enough for a first birthday. You can get a decorated sheet cake and then they will add a smash cake to match for free! We went with a farm theme for the main cake and the bakery added a cow to the smash cake.
We had the best time celebrating our little guy! If you’re looking to throw a farm themed birthday, hopefully you grabbed a few ideas from me. Enjoy your celebration!