Brooklyn's First Birthday- Teddy Bear Picnic

We planned our vacation to Texas so that we would be there for Brooklyn's first birthday since all of my family is down there.
I think I started planning the big first birthday party a few months in advance by creating a Pinterest board and looking for things on Etsy.  Since one of Brooklyn's nicknames is Brooky Bear I decided to make it a teddy bear picnic birthday party.
My sister in law Angie had given us a bunch of adorable outfits at Brooklyn's baby shower so I didn't have to spend any money on her outfit.  I love how girly it was.
The best part about the party was having so much family there! All of my siblings were there with their kids, my aunt and her kids, Thomas' sister and Aunt, and my parents.  Everyone knew each other and all the kids seemed to have someone their age to play with so as the hostess I didn't have to worry at all about people feeling akward. (I just realized I don't have any pictures of my sister Bea! She was the one who took all of the pictures which was SO nice of her! And I don't have any of my Aunt and Uncle, Doug and Maragaret!!)

My mom went to a lot of trouble to make one big cake for everybody that was a 3D teddy bear with a bow that matched the bow Brooklyn was wearing.  She also made a miniature 3D bear for Brooklyn's smash cake that was soy, gluten, dairy, and egg free!! And Brooklyn loved it! She was a little bit traumatized at first when we were singing happy birthday and she went to touch the candle and burnt her little finger.  I felt so bad! Hopefully it's something we can laugh at down the road.  I think she learned an important lesson that day: Chocolate heals everything :). And her boy cousins were so sweet and sang and danced for her to make her feel better and laugh it off.

This picture breaks my heart!

Originally we were going to have party outside since it was a picnic theme, but it was Texas tornado season so we had it indoors.  We set up blankets to sit on in the living room and had balloons tied to little teddy bears in the middle. Along the fireplace pictures of Brooklyn from each month of life were hung from birth to 12 months.

As guests came in they got some teddy bear ears and there was a quote from the book and an invite.

We had a couple activities planned for the kids at the party.  Each of the kids made their own build-a-bear and filled out a birth certificate. Later my mom did a read-a-loud of the book "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" by Jimmy Kennedy and Alexandra Day.

Brooklyn was intent listening to Nana read the story.

Nana is a great at reading stories!

Brooklyn loved all the books and stuffed animals she got! Great Grandpa Clement got her a Leap Frog teddy bear that says her name and plays her favorite songs and talks about other favorite things of hers and she loves that.  Another gift she seems to really like is a book that plays different nursery rhyme songs.

She LOVES interactive books.

Her new thing is to hug stuffed animals (which I learned at her 12 month appointment is a developmental milestone).

LeapFrog sure knew what they were doing with this thing, she loves it.

For the picnic food we had Bear Burgers (hamburgers), "bearies", Teddy's Taters (sweet potato fries Brooklyn's fave), and Teddy's Treats (a combo of Teddy Grahams and Honeycomb cereal). And to drink was "StrawBEARY lemonade".

I had a bunch of leftover scrapbook cardstock from the "Happy Birthday" banner I had made.  While looking up burger baskets online I found a layout for making them.  That saved some dinero and tied in the decor.  Win-win.
Loved celebrating our little Brooky Bear with family! Now to start planning next year's birthday bash ;).