Explorer Themed First Birthday Party

Hello peeps, Talia here! I have to ask you, what kind of blogger am I that I didn’t even take proper photos of the decorations at my own son’s birthday party?! A slack one, that’s what! I wanted to show you all the neat stuff I made for Lior’s first birthday party (HOW is my baby ONE?!), so hopefully you can get the gist.

Okay, so we hosted Lior’s birthday party at our house, specifically in our backyard (though it was very hot and lots of people stayed indoors. I wanted to disguise the corners of our yard somehow, so I made these backdrops out of old sheets and some pieces of bamboo. Originally I wanted the cake to sit here but it was just too hot! I decorated the table with some globes, atlas’, party whistles and his scrapbooks. How lovely is that old school French map hanging on the fence?!

The cake is one of my favourite parts. I saw this tiny little globe in a bookshop and knew it would be perfect as a cake topper! I added gold edible glitter as well to make the globe tie in with the cake. Obviously we put globes behind the cake to make sure you all know about the theme. Haha!

One of our friends used our globe/explorer theme for her wrapping. How incredibly thoughtful is that!!???! I had planned to make my own party hats, but there just wasn’t time, so these cute dinosaur ones from the supermarket did the trick. And the party bags were pretty simple - a little “thanks for coming to my birthday party” picture from Lior on the front, and then inside I had globe stress balls, bubbles and a balloon. Lucky not much effort went into them as I forgot to give them out to the kids.

Here you can see a bit of the setup. It was warm outside, so I tried to set up umbrellas for shade. We also had blankets and bean bags out on the lawn for people to relax in. The little pool thing you see was filled with toys instead of water. More as a place to collect them all than a place to necessarily play.

I had a few activities planned for the kids that would be there (about 12, ranging from 8 months to 8 years!). Chalk to write on the fence, crayons to draw with, and playdough (see below). We also had a little water trough set up which Lior had received that morning for his birthday. In Lior’s bedroom Luke had set up his lego for the older kids to play with. This was a hit and a few of the older boys enjoyed playing in that area. It was out of the way of the babies (so no choking hazard), and made another space for bodies to congregate (my husband was super paranoid about there not being enough room for 50+ people!!).

Hopefully above you can see some of the decorations as well. The passport table cloth and globe stamped food lables (bottom left), the streamers and maps all over the walls and patio ceiling (bottom right), the balloons (including globe printed ones!), and the map bunting (top).

P.S can you see in the top photo below the globe squished under the table? That is one of the very cool inflatable globes we had tossed around. Fun fun!

In summary, the things I made were:

• Bamboo and fabric backdrops for the tables
• Globe topped birthday cake
• Globe stamped food lables
• Map bunting
• “Happy Birthday Lior” in chalk on the fence
• Party bags with globe stress balls
• Decorative tables with globes, atlas’, and scrapbooks

This was a really easy theme to achieve because I am a globe collector already (and this party was a super good excuse to buy a few more!!). I get them off ebay and gumtree and places like that. Well worth a look! I found the atlas’ in an op shop, and used only a few pages, so I would say that cost me less than 50c, likewise the stamps I already had (you can get them here), and used scraps of paper for the food labels.

The most expensive thing I bought solely for the party was the passport stamp fabric for the table cloth. In my opinion this was well worth it though because I can use this to make some nifty clothes, or as more decorations in the future!

T'lia (43 Posts)

20-something crafter. I love having a go at almost anything!