A Fox, a Box, and a First Birthday

I cannot believe we have another one year old! Where did an entire year go!? And why does it have to go so fast!? But it went and it's gone and here we are. Time to celebrate!

Theme

For the theme we chose Dr. Seuss' Fox in Socks book.
When Alvin was born we thought it would be fun to have the book because of all the rhyming words with his middle name, Knox. It turns out that we didn't know the book as well as we thought we did. Imagine our surprise when reading it with Alvin for the first time to find out the other character in the book is named Mr. Knox!

Invitations

Time Capsule

I've done this with all the kids and it's one of my favorite parts to include at a first birthday. We had ultrasound pics, hospital hat and bracelets, first shoes, blessing outfit, birth announcement, pictures we drew right before he was born, etc.

Decorations

I wanted everything to be simple for the party, from the food to the decorations. But let's be honest I don't do simple. For the front door and photo booth, I took some old tissue paper pom poms from the girls room and attached them to swim noodles to make giant, Seuss-like flowers.  

Our Dr. Seuss theme wouldn't be complete without The Cat in the Hat. Richard made this years ago for his Speech classroom and we've kept it ever since hoping to get another chance to use it.

I found copies of pages from the book on the internet, put my own words in place of the story, printed them out and then attached them on the wall to look like books.

On the treat table I had a box of Dr. Seuss books (most of them from the library), random sized boxes that I wrapped with gift wrap, and other boxes and blocks.

Activities

One thing to note is that for the first time in months, Alvin actually went to other people without crying! His grandparents have been aching to hold and love him and this just made our whole day!

The girls love building towers out of blocks and then calling Alvin over to knock them down. And he loves doing it! So for the first half hour or so we simply played with blocks. Alvin was right at home knocking down everyone's towers.

And we wouldn't be doing the book justice if we didn't put our Mr. Knox in a Box. We made some pretty sweet towers out of them, too.

Next we took turns reading The Fox in Socks book so the rest of the party would make sense.

Another tradition we have is to put together a movie, a compilation of videos we've taken, of the first year. It is SO much work and we're always scrambling to get it done in time, but it is also such a keepsake. We found that we actually watch the videos in this format, but never do when they're just somewhere saved on our computer. So thank you family for sitting thru yet another video of our memories!

Cake Smash

I made cupcakes for our guests and decided that instead of a true smash cake I would just make one using my jumbo muffin pan. It turned out great!

The remains.

Treat Table

The food is always my favorite part to plan.

 

We had Three Cheese Trees and Crackers

New Blue Goo (rice crispy treats with blue candy melts drizzled on top)

Seuss Story Snack (trail mix)

Tweetle Beetle Water Bottles

We were all supposed to wear crazy socks.

Grandma and Grandpa brought the neatest socks for Alvin. Grandpa purchased them when he was in Korea over 40 years ago! And they are adorable! I didn't get a picture of Alvin wearing them but I might be able to track one down.

These fancy digs of my dad's were, by far, the coolest socks at the party. If there had been a prize, he would have won!

I've never done a photo booth at a party before but this was a real hit. Thank you to my in-laws for bringing all their great hats and props!

Party Favors

See it's a stack. Blocks on Bricks on a Box. Get it? Okay so it's kind of a stretch and the poetry is a little rough but it worked.

 

Even if I think Alvin should stay a baby forever, he does make a pretty awesome one year old. And we had such a fun time celebrating him and his first year!

Happy Birthday Mr. Knox!!!