Rubber Ducky -1yr- Quakers & Blue Pond Water

RUBBER DUCKY 1ST BIRTHDAY! 

INVITATIONS: We took a picture of my daughter laughing in the bathtub with lots of bubbles and rubber duckies of various sizes and styles and we uploaded it onto cardstore.com and made it into a postcard. The postcard read, "Emma's All Quacked Up over her 1st Birthday Party! Join us at Emma's Rubber Duck Pond on(fill in date and time) for a very ducky celebration! 

ENTERTAINMENT: I had to do a lot of calling around, but I found a bounce house locally that was blue with a big duck on it! In addition to that, we had a little blow up pool filled with ducks that the small kids could pick a duck from that had a color on the bottom that coordinated to prizes (a little ducky visor, a ducky floating toy, or a bath tub spout duck cover)! We allowed the kids to them splash in that pool or with their parents they could go in the big pool or bounce house.   

FAVORS: My husband and I put together a CD full of kid songs that had to do with water and ducks (rubber ducky, splish splash, under the sea, six little ducks, row your boat, etc.) and made a cover for them that said, "Emma & Ducky's Bath Time Songs". We got tote bags from Oriental Trading Company and wrote " __(child name)'s__Tub Tote" on them with puffy paint and made puffy paint bubbles and a duck on each one. We filled them with a rubber duck, two bath crayons each, a ducky washcloth, the CD, and a small container of bubble bath (which I made by emptying out hotel shampoo bottles that we had and decorating the bottles with stickers and then filling up the bottles with Mr. Bubble.)! 

DECORATIONS: We made large cut out ducks from poster board and hung them along the back fence leading to the back yard where there was a wooden sign that said "Emma's Rubber Duck Pond!" We had light blue balloons hung all over the yard as bubbles and we had about 50 rubber ducks floating in the pool! We covered the tables in blue table cloths and set ducks all down the center along with little tins of crackers that we labled "Quackers" for the guests to snack on! We had bottles of bubbles all over the tables as well so that the kids could blow bubbles. We set up a blow up pool empty in the shade for gifts. 

FOOD: I kept food simple by making peanut butter and jelly for the kids and cutting them into duck shapes using a large cookie cutter. I also served them quackers and blue pond water (Blue juice from Schwan's) that was in a large punch bowl with one duck floating on top! For the adults, we just bar-b-qued burgers with side dishes! We made duck shaped cookies, candies (molds from Michael's), and blue cupcakes with bubbles and little duck sticks.  

CAKE: I found a really great cake idea and I ran with it! I found a duck cake mold at Michael's Crafts and I found a blue tin that sort of resembled an old fashioned tub. I put a box in the bottom of the tin to put the duck shaped cake up high in the tub. I covered the box with waxed paper. I made a large batch of blue frosting and I dipped large and small marshmellows in it to cover them in blue. After every couple of handfuls, I would add white frosting to make the blue a little ligther, so I ended up with about 4 different shades of blue bubbles sitting around my ducky cake! It was absolutely adorable! I also made a little cake and topped it with a small rubber duck for my daughter to tear into since it was her first birthday! She loved eating the frosting right off the duck!  

THANK YOU NOTES: As we let our daughter open her presents we took pictures of her with each gift and made personalized photo cards also on cardstore.com with a personal thank you note to each guest. They were VERY reasonabl priced.