A Hot Air Balloon First Birthday Party

My littlest kiddo turned one this week. ONE! When I my first kiddo turned one, it seemed to take a long while to get to that first birthday. But on this last kiddo, it feels like he was a newborn just last month. So this is my last first birthday 🙁 It’s a little sad for me, but we went out of babyhood forever with a bang 😉 My little guy had a Hot Air Balloon First Birthday. And here are the pics!

I’m going to start with my most favorite part of all, the photobooth! I loved this photobooth. It was SUPER easy to make and really fun to take pictures in.

To put it together, I bought a 3 foot balloon (I actually bought several for the decorations) and a hot air balloon net. Then I bought a basket big enough to fit a full grown adult (sitting down) and all I had to do was tie the net to the basket handles. The wall behind it was painted light blue already, so I didn’t have to have a backdrop. I did add some white 12 inch balloons tied together with some fishing wire and tacked to the wall with thumbtacks. I also used the fishing wire to tie some white balloons to the bottom so you didn’t see the floor from the right angle (at this angle, you could totally see the floor, but check out the next picture).

Hot Air Balloon Party | OneCraftyThing.com

This is my grandma in the photobooth after most of the guests had left and we were goofing around. The whole prop was next to a window and the shadows here kind of were strong because it was late in the day, but the party was in the morning and the light was much better then.

Hot Air Balloon Party | OneCraftyThing.com

The photobooth, like I said, was my absolutely most favorite thing of the party.

So on to the rest! The decorations were also fun to do. I bought some cool paper lantern hot air balloons and put little people finger puppets in them. So simple, but looked good:

Hot Air Balloon Party | OneCraftyThing.com

Around the rest of the house, we had a couple of large 3 foot balloon like the one in the photobooth and we attached them to several baskets with the nets. Some of my older kiddos’ dollies made for hot air balloon riders 🙂

Hot Air Balloon Party | OneCraftyThing.com Hot Air Balloon Party | OneCraftyThing.com

 

For the dessert table and cake, we set up a swag on the wall made from a simple red plastic table cloth accented with balloons. For the table, we served fruit, popcorn in mini popcorn boxes (similar to these), mini cupcakes, meringues, chex mix, alfajores cookies (soft, crumbly cookies with dulce de leche inside), and mazamorra morada (a sort of purple maize pudding; it’s not super sweet but has a fruity taste to it). Here was the set up:

Hot Air Balloon Party | OneCraftyThing.com

 

And here’s a detail of the cake, made by my awesome friend at Sweet Party Treats! She makes delicious desserts and this cake was just perfect. I made more use of those nets and 3 foot balloon to make it look like a hot air balloon:

Hot Air Balloon Party | OneCraftyThing.com

And I painted some kokeshi cake toppers of the birthday boy and his sisters in the balloon:

Hot Air Balloon Party | OneCraftyThing.com

Lots of fun was had as we had a bouncy house and a magician/face painter/balloon twister come in to entertain. It turned out perfect! At the end, when we all were going home, we gave some fun favors to take home too.

The whole lot of them took up much more space than I thought, but here were a lot of them:

Hot Air Balloon Party | OneCraftyThing.com

And here they are a little more close up. I used mini popcorn boxes (similar to these), for the “basket” part and put some holes on each side, using some baker’s twine to attach it simply to a balloon. Inside, there were people finger puppets (there are six to a family pack! A grandma, a grandpa, a mom, a dad, a girl and her brother), a small bottle of bubbles, a pack of crayons, and an mini activity book that I designed. On the front of the mini activity book was a coloring page of the birthday boy’s face (I offer custom coloring book portraits on my etsy page here), a hot air balloon maze, a word search and a hot air balloon coloring page. My older kiddos loved them 🙂

Hot Air Balloon Party | OneCraftyThing.com

In the end we were tired but happy. It was a great send off to that first year. Here’s to many many more for my big birthday boy 🙂


Today I used:

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