Pink/Brown Dog Town -1yr- Visit Puppy Pound

For my daughter Aleks's first birthday party my 3 year old daughter, Jamie, picked a dog theme. 

For our invitations I went through pingg.com which emails and mails out the invititations you create.  Plus they send reminders and manage your guests's responses.  Another great bonus is that as part of the invitation you get to create a website of your child for your guests to visit.  At the end of the event it even sends your guests a thank you for coming. 

The picture on our invitation had two dogs sitting back to back to create the shape of a birthday cake.  The background was filled with colorful confetti.  It read, The streets of this dog town have been painted pink and brown.  So come on out and have some fun our little pup is turning one!" 

For the decorations I found a great package at Factory Card Outlet.  The decorations were designed for a girls first birthday.  It included:  3 signs 2 hanging paper balls 2 centerpieces a floor mat to sit the high chair on a banner of little party hats strung together to go around the highchair tray and pink streamers.  I also bought her a matching party hat.

As the decorations were all pink they went nicely with our theme of "Pink and Brown Dog Town".  We had several babies and younger children there which I knew games would not be something they could do.  Instead I placed baby toys throughout the living room for them to be easily accesible no matter where the parents sat. 

The biggest hit was the "Dog Pound".  From several stores including Walgreens Target and Michael's I purchased stuffed dogs ranging in price from $1 to $3.99.  At Target I also found gift bags with a puppy dog on them.  I bought enough of these that each child could take their puppy home in their new "cage".  On the computer I made adoption certificates that read " ______ was adopted by ________ on January 23rd at Aleks's first birthday party." 

Upon arriving I took each child to the "Pound" where they chose their puppy.  For the pound I emptied a shelving unit with canvas drawers that we had bought at Target and placed the pups in each square of the unit. The babies we sat on the floor and watched to see which pup they were attracted to.  The parents really enjoyed it!  It was a hit with the older children as well; who doesn't love a cuddly stuffed animal?! 

For the older children I had also scattered coloring pages of puppies with crayons on a table.  For the adults I even had games and activities.  I created a worksheet for them to put their answers on.  Imprinted in the background was either a picture of paw prints or a puppy.  The first game "Can You Recognize Aleks?" was looking at 5 sets of pictures each set had a picture of Aleks and a picture of Jamie. On each picture I wrote A or B.  On the answer sheet they had to write whether A or B was Aleks.  

The next game was 6 numbered picture of Aleks.  On their worksheet they had to write numbers in chronological order from youngest to oldest.  I also had 2 questions at the bottom of the worksheet:  How much did Aleks weigh at birth? And How much did Jamie weigh at birth?  It was a trick question as they both weighed 7 lb. 7 oz.  I had 3 puppy prizes for the people who got the most right; Benji movie set puppy notepad and a mini puppy calendar.  On the hutch I set up a large stuffed dog holding a sign inviting the guests to take a head shot photo of Aleks and a wallet of their choice. 

We served sandwiches gold fish crackers chips and a veggie tray. For the babies I also had animal crackers and cheerios.  To reinforce the pink and brown scheme I had pink and brown plates utensils and napkins.  I made pink (white cake mix) cupcakes and chocolate cupcakes and displayed them on 2 cupcake holders.  I made 1" dog bone sugar cookies for the decoration on top. 

For the larger cake I made a marble cake.  I decorated it with a larger dog bone sugar cookie and a "1" candle on the top in the center and wrote around the edges "Happy Birthday Aleks".  Other goodies included ice cream and a tray of leftover dog bone cookies and chocolate covered pretzels. 

46 people joined us for our daughter's special day it was quite the Dog Party!"