Panda Party Wrap Up

We had so much fun at our panda party this weekend. Thank you so much to all of our awesome friends who came out to celebrate one full year with our sweet little panda.  Here's a wrap up of what we did:



Invitations

I made this invitation using a panda graphic I found online. I made them a 4 x 6 size so I could take advantage of online deal for "photos" and print them as a "photo" from Walgreens (there are always promos running on photography websites so check the usual suspects like snapfish, shutterfly, etc.). Custom invitations for the price of generic fill-in-the-blank ones from Walmart?  Winning!

Smash Cake

No one year old's party is complete without watching the kid destroy a cake right? That's what I tried to tell myself as I caved to pressure to let my mostly sugar-abstinent child have a whole cake to himself. I had a juice pulp muffin recipe I'd perfected the week before, but when it came down to it, I just didn't have time to make that and the cupcakes...so he just got a regular cake.

I am by no means a cake decorator but I am SO happy with how this cake turned out. I bought this Wilton Stand-Up Cuddly Bear Pan Set at Michael's, just followed the instructions that came with it and I think it turned out pretty freaking awesome if I do say so myself.  It's actually pretty little and only used one cup of cake batter. Here it is with our one year old for scale:

Food

This is the full spread. I covered our table with bamboo placemats from Dollar Tree, labeled foods with panda clipart on and decorated with small plastic pandas I got in a tube from Amazon. We got both black and white plates and napkins and alternated them in a stack.

Panda Party Menu:

• Carrot sticks (with ranch dip)
• Apple slices (with fresh ground peanut butter)
• Celery sticks (with ranch dip)
• Fortune Cookies (from Panda Express)
• Sushi with standard garnishes (pandas eat sushi, right?)
• Cookies & cream panda cupcakes
• Organic Baby Mum-Mums (for our littlest guests)
• Iced Green Tea
• Lemonade

(The ears are cut out from a black Wilton Sugar Sheet)

Party Favors

I made panda ears for guests to wear. It was pretty fun to have a whole house full of guests wearing panda ears. I shared my tutorial on how I made them here.

Other Stuff

We rented Ultimate Pandas from our local library to have playing on the TV in the living room. It's just footage of pandas with little to no talking, which was perfect

Kaypha, of course, wore his freezer paper stenciled "Birthday Panda" onesie. My graphic and break down of how I made it are here.

Over all, it was a great party. Lots of fun, laid back and full of crafty goodness....just the way a one year old's birthday party should be.