I cannot believe I am sitting here writing this, because my Blair is ONE! Is it just me, or does every new mom plan their baby’s first birthday from the time they are three months old? When we named Blair, her nickname became “B”, which then became “Bumble Bee” and “Bee Hive” – so it was a no brainer that her first birthday was going to be BEE themed! Unfortunately, we had to alter our plans due to everything going on in the world right now, but we were still able to celebrate from afar!
We ultimately decided we would decorate our garage, do a cake smash and have a small treats table for the few people that came to our driveway to celebrate. (We did ask them to all stay separated by household!) My friend, Cindy, offered me help set up B’s birthday months ago when I first started planning, and she made all my ideas come to life! It was absolutely perfect, and I am so thankful for her creative touch! You can find her party inspo instagram account here 🙂
Balloon Arch
The main part of the backdrop was the balloon arch! It was so perfect with all the pastel colors and different size balloons, but it was a bit of a tricky task.
Balloons:
The pastel balloons are actually just normal colored balloons that were double stuffed into white balloons before inflated, in order to make it a nice light pastel color. The balloons we got were from Bargain Balloons and they were the Qualatex brand! We got all different sizes from 5”, 11”, 16” and a few white 36” balloons.
We used the bigger balloons as the main arch, and then used the small 5” balloons to add in fillers at the end where there were some gaps. It also helped to have these balloons pre-inflated in a garbage bag, so we could just grab a cluster of one color and tape it onto the main arch. Cindy had these mini balloons already clustered in 4-7 balloon clusters so they were easy to add as filler and use double stick dots to attach to the places we wanted to fill.
To put it all together, we used:
- Balloon Arch Kit
- Fishing line
- Balloon hand pump – use for double stuffed balloons
- Electric balloon pump – use for non-double stuffed balloons
- Suction cups
Cindy is so smart and made the giant balloon arch in 4 separate sections which made putting it up a little easier. The physical balloons were attached using the stuff that comes in the kit which makes attaching the balloons pretty easy. Since the arch was going up on my glass garage she used fishing line and suction cups. We had to wrap the fishing line around the ballon arch base and then tie it to the hooks on the suction cups that were suctioned to our garage doors. To cover the hooks and the wire and add dimension to the overall look, we used the small 5” balloon clusters in the matching colors with double stick dots. The large white balloons at the bottom were stuck down to the ground with boxing tape, so they didn’t move in the wind.
#1 Balloon Mosaic
The #1 Balloon Mosaic was such a cute addition and I really feel like it pulled the entire balloon story together! Everything we did came from The Creative Heart Studio. There are super helpful videos on how to put a balloon mosaic together at the bottom of the first page, that Cindy used as her guide.
She used the same Qualtext balloons in the #1 that we used for the balloon arch, just sizing down to only the 5” and 11”. These were orange and white double stuffed to get this pink pastel color, and we didn’t inflate them all the way! In total, it took about 40 5” balloons and 10 11” balloons.
To put it together, she used:
- 1 40×60 inch 3/16” foam core sheets
- Craft blade
- Low temperature glue gun
- Large glue dots
- Metal edge ruler
- Cutting mat
The leftover balloons were used to create a skirt for Blair’s highchair that she did her cake smash in! We used those double sticky dots to connect to her high chair!
Backdrop
The “Bee-Day” Backdrop was an Etsy find, that we customized to have Blair’s name on it. It was the perfect backdrop for this theme!
Cake
Blair’s cake for her cake smash was from Lucy and Lemons! Blair LOVED this cake! She had never had anything that sweet before, and she cried multiple times when taking it away from her 😂 The design was stunning, I will for sure order more cakes from her 🙂
We used our own cake topper for the “One” and our own candle for the “1” for her, (Al and I), to blow out.
Treats Table
Even though we didn’t have her ‘party’ I did still want to use all the things we had ordered for it so I set up a treat table still for photos 😂
For the kids drinks we used honey bottles from Amazon, and just added lemonade in them, with paper straws. We added these vinyl honeybees onto the bottles ourselves!.
Linking here the cupcake wrappers, the cupcake honey drizzles, the honeycomb cupcake stand, and the cake stand!
A few more links:
When Life Give You Lemons printable
Although it wasn’t our original plan, her birthday still turned out better than I could have ever imagined. It was a perfect first ‘bee day’ for Blair and something we will definitely always remember ❤️
This is Beautiful Karlie!! You guys did such an amazing job on everything! That ballon arch is so cool… I love that you are sharing everything you used and the lemonade idea, SO cute!!! 🍋 Happy first birthday B!