Owl Party First Birthday Preps

Owl party inspiration

Once upon a time, I used to be a super hero / community organizer.  I've put together my fair share of fundraisers, parties, meetings, religious services, and other events.  One of my favorite things to do was to spruce up a gathering with handmade decorations.  My last few little hurrahs were donned with decorations made out of construction paper.  I am sometimes a frugal Virgo, and I am determined to spend $100 or less on Lily's party.  It should be a fun celebration, we should take great pictures, but Lily isn't going to remember it.

Sean and I decided to do owls for Lily's first birthday.  In browsing Pinterest for ideas, I found that lots of people loved owl parties for babies, too!  I used to be able to power through decorations for a small event in a couple of days.  However, I now only have a few minutes to spend on this at a time.  So, I knew I'd have to start months and months in advance if I wanted to even remotely finish by her first birthday.  So far, I've spent just under $28.

Getting ready to make paper chains (while watching TV)!

paper chains

"Happy Birthday" banner

I cut the banners out of construction paper. Here is the template for that.  I used the printable files from How to Nest for Less to get the letters and owls.

leaves for a big tree

I would love to put a tree in the doorway between the dining room and the living room.  I love this droopy tree.   We have some cardboard boxes around the house that we'll use to make a long tree stump.  I cut out 100 of these leaves for good measure.  Here's what it might look like:

Here are more ideas that I'm working on:

I love these square cupcake toppers.  I used Photoshop to cut out the circle on the round cupcake toppers above, and I'm going to cut them in squares.  I want to layer them with scrapbook paper, which is a really quick way to liven them up a bit.  I also think I'm going to take some of these and make them magnets for party favors.  I think that these magnets are really cute, and I'd love to buy some of them from Etsy, but I want to do this on a budget, and I can personalize the ones I print.

 These owl glass decorations are super cute.  I have extra foam from another project, and I picked up some of the squiggly stuff and googly eyes from Joann Fabrics. 

I like the way they used balloons here.

This is a really cute way to showcase Lily from birth to 1 year.  If I get everything else done, I'd love to do this.

I really like this idea of drawing an outline of something on cardboard or paper board and cutting it out.  This looks really cool!  Not sure if I can figure out anything that it would work for.  Maybe the tree trunk?  The idea comes from a night owl party that looks really fun.