Hello Kitty Party 1yr - One-derful Birthday

Hello Kitty One-derful Birthday Bash! I recently threw a birthday party for my newest niece who turned 1 years old.  We actually had it planned since she was 4 months old.  We used Hello Kitty as the theme since the mother absolutely loves Hello Kitty and it has recently came back into the stores.  We luckily found a lot of the decorations, party favors, and other HK items on sale/clearance through out the year. 

I made invitations for all the quests, but downloading a HK graphic and placing it on a Microsoft Word document.  I made 3 (8.5 X 3) invitations per page with flowers and butterfly graphics.  I placed on the pertinent information as you do on an invitation.  I took the same graphics and printed then on standard white envelops.  

I researched all the websites that have Hello Kitty, including sanrio.com.  I found many crafts, print outs, and ideas from these sites and came up with some things on my own as well.  Let's get to the decorations starting from entering the front door.  We had a party favor table set up with white tablecloth, pink helium balloons, and a big picture of the birthday girl that I created.  It was a white square frame with a large mat and a 4X4 picture.  I put flower foam stickers that spelled out her name and one with a HK Graphic we printed a cut out by hand, even the whiskers, on the mat.  That was for the parents and told them I will make one for them each year. 

The party favors were 3X2 white w/ silver polka dot picture frames (purchased at Target for $0.10 each) with the picture that was on the invite and another pose as well to choose from that lay on either side of the big picture frame. This was for the adults. The kids received a goody bag that I will describe in the Craft section of this submission.  

Helpful Hint: Under this table held all my supplies for crafts and games along with the prizes for easy access and out of the way.  In the formal dining/living room combo, we placed a pink plastic table covering over the coffee table and fuchsia one on the dining table.  They have one wall that is just a mirror, so we hung a HK shower curtain (purchased at Target for 75% off) with suction cup hooks in the middle.  I covered the suction cup hooks with alternating pink and white air blown balloons.  On each dining room chair I tied more pink helium blown balloons.  Then I tied together 4 to 5 pink balloons (petals) to one small round white balloon to make a flower that lay in the center of the dining room table.  I purchased HK egg decorating dye kits (Garden Ridge after Easter for 90% off, so I cleaned the place out) that had an egg holder with HK body in different clothes and scenarios and a HK face to go with the body that you placed on an egg.  It had 6 different styles, princess, ballerina, bicyclist, hula, aviator, and bunny.  I used pink, fuchsia, purple, lavender plastic eggs from Easter.  I put a few these around the balloon flower on the table. 

On the coffee table we laid our crafts down.  We purchased pink w/ white flowers and pink w/flowers and butterflies plastic Easter buckets (Target for $0.09 each) that where about 5 to 6 inches tall and round.  We also had some other buckets with the same design that were 2 inches tall and about 10 inches in diameter.  We used them for various things, such as holding markers, colored pencils, glue, foam shapes, hello kitty graphics/stickers, and so on.  Crafts that we had available for the kids, and some adults that participated, create your own HK goodie bag, make a birthday card for the Birthday Girl, paint a picture frame, and HK coloring pages.  Of course the kids were real creative and created more things with the cardstock, construction paper, and HK graphics. 

Let me give some detail on each craft.  First, HK goodie bags were white lunch sacks purchased from Wal-Mart.  We originally wanted to print HK image that they could color, but it would not print correctly on the bag, so we came up with them decorating the bag how they wanted.  As stated above we had every craft supply imaginable for them to use.  Once they were done we put them to the side to dry after writing their name on it.  Second, Birthday card was simple card stock in various colors, HK graphics printed out and cut out, and all the other supplies.  They turned our very cute and creative.  The parents enjoyed having these for memories of her 1st birthday.  Third, we had wooden 5X7 wooden picture frames, 3-D paint in various colors, and creative minds.  The kids made one for themselves and one for the birthday girl.  A few adults joined in on this craft project as well.  I also took some of the HK images and placed them in the picture frames before they started.  The picture frames were placed in a bucket. 

Last we had free time with HK coloring pages, HK maze, and HK crossword puzzles that were all downloaded from various websites I visited. These all were in buckets as well.  Back to decorations, before we get into the games.  In the breakfast nook and the pass bar we placed an obscene, but very pretty, amount of HK and pink decorations.  I found this clothesline with 12 mini clothes pins that had pink and yellow flowers on them at Ikea ($0.99).  I had the mom print a picture from each month from birth up to the birthday month (12 months).  She went the extra mile and did a montage of each month with some really cute and funny pictures.  We strung this along the buffet they had set up on the kitchen counter and pass bar.  A lot of the guests had not seen the baby since she was born or a few months old, so this helped them catch up on her growth through out the year.  On the actually bar and counters we placed more plastic pink covering and laid various buckets the held plastic ware, cups, napkins that were not HK themed to tie them in to the theme.  Around these buckets we had HK party plates and napkins.  I also bought monogrammed paper napkins to spell out her name.  I also made some centerpieces using the buckets, foam, tissue paper, and floral foam. The one on the bar had her name cut out from white foam sheets with hello kitty stickers on the letters.  I used fuchsia straws to hold each letters and stuck them in the floral foam.  I placed white paper shred over the floral foam to hide it.  I also purchased large swirl lollipops (Target for $1 each) that I stuck HK images and sticker on the front and back, so I put one of those in there. 

We also placed Fairy wings on the back of the barstools that look so cute.  On the breakfast table chairs we tied pink bows, from her aunt's wedding chair cover business.  Since hello kitty wears bows we found this tied the wooden table into the theme.  We covered the table with more pink plastic covering, added fuchsia tissue paper in the center and placed 3 levels of cake plates in the center for the cakes.  Yes, Cakes.  We purchased 3 sample cakes from a wedding bakery ($2.50/each) and then decorated them ourselves with various HK graphics, HK egg decorating masks/bodies, HK marshmallow pop, flower/star/butterfly shaped lollipops (Party City 3/$99), pink ribbon/bows, and pink piping.  We put happy on one cake, birthday on another, and the last one had her name.  I found a pink 1 candle with flowers on it for her to blow out.  I placed tulle around the cake plates for some more frills and some HK figurines that mommy already had.  I took 8 white 8 pink helium blown balloons tied them at various heights from the light fixture overhead to add color and hide the chain in the pictures. 

Of course we had a HK HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner that strung in the window sit behind the breakfast table, added the huge HK plush and some more pink and white air blown balloons that would be seen in the pictures taken at the time of the cake.  We bought a HK bowl/plate/cup set for the BDAY girl's place setting and a HK tiara for her to wear when she blew out and cut her cake.  I placed on more centerpiece I made on the family room coffee table.  This was one of the short buckets with her name cut out in pink foam and stuck in floral foam with wooden party picks.  I put purple pipe cleaner around the picks and placed tissue paper over and under the floral foam.  I put another large swirl lollipop with HK image and 1 cut out in foam stuck on it in the mix.  I used white paper shred again to cover any holes puncturing the tissue paper.  I took some plastic Easter eggs with the HK masks and laid them in front of her name.  Pink plastic table covering was put on the coffee table/ottoman to hide the brown leather.  In addition to all these different areas, I made a gift table using a card table covered in pink plastic table cover that wrapped the table like a gift.  I covered various sizes of floral foam with wrapping paper, ribbons, and made a centerpiece with another bucket, lollipop, tissue paper, HK images, and bows.  I also tied helium blown balloons in pink and white to the table. 

After the goodie bags were all dry, I had all sorts of goodies in the same pink Easter buckets we used through out the house.  Let's see, we had HK Easter egg filled with jelly beans, HK gummies, HK plastic cups, HK pop tarts in HK sandwich Ziplocs, and jelly beans in HK snack Ziplocs.  I also gave the boys bug and dog stickers with a plain colored cup instead of the HK cup.  We played pin the bow on Hello Kitty, that was download from a website that shortly after removed it.  We actually had 3 winners, so they all got HK chocolate from Easter.  We played Pass the Kitty (Hot Potato) with a small HK plush and that winner won a HK art backpack.  I had a couple of NON HK prizes for any boys that won, but none of them did.  I also had Guess How Many Kisses in a Jar.  I found pink wrapped Hershey Kisses in the clearance aisle at Target and got a food canister from Ikea.  I table HELLO KITTY from one of the gummy candy boxes and cut some small pieces of paper from pink card stock for guest to write the guess.  We put these in a HK plush Easter basket to be tallied later.  We had 2 of these plush baskets (Target Easter clearance for 90% off) for prizes, but ran out of time to give them away. 

Another game we intended to play was HK puzzle race.  We found Hello Kitty jigsaw puzzles at Ross and were going to have team race each other to put it together.  We ran out of time for this game, so I gave it to the Mom to exchange for some clothes for the baby.  As for the food, since 1-year-old parties are mainly for the adults we served traditional party food, which all the kids eat.  The birthday girl's grandmas made all this for the party.  There was stir fried noodles, spring rolls, egg rolls, beef stew, soup, pork meatballs, and some other dishes.  It was a feast.  In addition to all of this, we took tons of pictures that we are sending to the guests for memories at the party through Yahoo photos with tons of Thank You's.  I had lots of compliments and kudos as guests left on the party.  I also had a lot of advice to go into party planning, but I just like doing it for friends and family for now.