We're continuing baseball week on the blog today with a look inside a Rookie of the Year themed first birthday party! I have a confession to make: I may or may not have started planning this party before my child was even born. Once I knew we were going with the vintage baseball nursery theme, it just made sense! It also helped with the budget because I literally pulled all of the decorations out of his room to add to the decor, so let's just say I was being resourceful, haha!

Let's start with the pre-planning. Since we knew well in advance what the theme was, I strategically planned his 1st birthday photo shoot for a couple of weeks before the party, and themed the shoot to match the party. That way, when I printed and blew up the photos for the party, I knew they would add to the theme decor! HUGE shout out to our sweet friend Joy at Joy Cannis Photography for shooting both the one year pics and the party!

Next comes the invitation. I designed it to look like a ticket to a baseball game, of course!

And then I got to work on my Silhouette. I was pretty sure I was going to wear it out with all of the stuff I was cutting, but I couldn't help myself - I was having too much fun! All of the signs you'll see over the food tables, the welcome sign, the bunting banners and the hall of fame signs were all made on my Silhouette Cameo. I LOVE that machine!

For the guest book, I printed an iPhoto book in advance with pics of Noah's first year so that all of the guests could leave messages for him on the inside covers.

Of course we had to serve our favorite All-American ball park classics: chili dogs, slider burgers, chips and fresh fruit!

The table centerpieces were my favorite project. We bought a huge roll of astro-turf grass from Home Depot for around $25 and then cut it into squares. I cut out the baseball diamonds on my Silhouette machine and boom, instant baseball field! Here's an event planner trick for you to save a little money on centerpieces - when you have a container, like the galvanized buckets that need to be filled, first fill up the bottom with rolled up newspaper or something similar. This cuts down on the amount of actual filler you need to buy (in this case, peanuts). Saves you quite a bit of money, and you don't have 40lbs of peanuts to deal with afterwards!

I had a lot of fun coming up with the dessert table. Here's a rundown of what we had:
All-American Parfaits which consisted of red jello, whip cream & blueberries (did I mention my son was a 4th of July baby? Of course we had to be a little patriotic!), Fast-ball oreo pops and Great Catch Cupcakes, complete with "grass" frosting, baseball mitts made of tootsie rolls and baseballs made of fondant.

UPDATE: You can download my food labels for FREE right HERE and HERE! I even made a blank one so that you can create labels for any food not listed above! (I used the free font "Brannonball" from Dafont - you can download that HERE)

One word of caution if you attempt these cupcakes...I had no idea how fast tootsie rolls melt! Ha! Our party was in July, so mind you it was H-O-T as all getout outside, however the party was inside and these puppies still started melting after sitting out for like 30 minutes. Whoops, lesson learned! They still tasted good!