Adam & Collin Turn One!

Let me start off by saying I LOVE parties. I love brainstorming a theme, I love coming up with a menu, I love executing my plans and I love celebrating. Before the boys were even born I knew what I wanted the theme of their first birthday to be: Toy Story Carnival. I’m a Disney addict and I just adore Toy Story. I felt it was a perfect boy theme. One of my favorite things to do in the Summer is go to carnivals, and the fact that the boys were born in the Summer made it a no-brainer to add the carnival to it! I also had some inspiration from the Toy Story Midway Mania ride in Disney World. We had SO much fun at this party and I had an even better time planning it. It was a perfect first birthday and I couldn’t have been happier about how it turned out!

Here are the invitations! I had a vision in my head how I wanted them and my friend Kelli couldn’t have made a more perfect invite. My Mom had gotten the boys Woody and Buzz jammies for Christmas and I thought they were perfect for an invite picture!

For the centerpieces on each table I cut out the characters on card stock and hot glued them to very thin wooden dowels. I stuck the dowels into floral foam. I got the red and green containers from party city for .99 cents! I was so excited when I found them because they were perfect for what I was imagining. We had three Woody centerpieces and three Buzz ones.

I knew I wanted to have a place for people to take photos, so I decided to make a big Etch a Sketch photo prop and a blue sky with clouds background. It was a hit!

I searched Pinterest and found a blog called Purple Patch Parties that actually had a Toy Story Midway Mania party on it. She made carnival games out of cardboard boxes and I just loved the idea. I had my husband go to an appliance warehouse and pick up some large refrigerator boxes for free!! I drew out a plan for him how I wanted the boxes cut out and he did it exactly the way I wanted them!

For the first game we had “Andy’s Room” which was where the kid had to knock down cans with bean bags.

I made some boxes to look like the ones in Andy’s room from the movie, and they also doubled as something to stand the cans on!

For the next game we had “Army Men Shoot Camp”

I decorated the inside of the box with camouflage fabric and the kids shot ping pong balls off golf tees with a nerf type gun.

The third game was “Al’s Toy Barn”

I ordered a farm bean bag toss game from Oriental trading. The kids really loved this one.

Last we had “Hamm and Eggs” I had cups with numbers on the bottom and the kids tossed pretend eggs into the cups.

Kids lining up to play!

For the games each kid got tickets to use at the prize table, although I had enough prizes for each child to get one of each prize. They loved going to the prize table and being able to “buy” their prizes. To hold their loot I made little green men goodie bags for them.

For the prizes we got Toy Story bracelets, mini barrel of monkeys, disguise glasses, lip whistles, parachute army men, Toy Story bubbles, Sheriff badges, Toy Story candy, Toy Story books, and some Toy Story noise makers.

After the games it was time for dessert!

For the desserts I had a cake made for each of the boys. They were the same decor, just flipped. Adam’s cake had cow print on top and blue with stars on the bottom and Collin’s had blue with stars on the top and cow on the bottom.

I absolutely loved the addition of the light up letters in each of the boy’s initials. I think it added such an adorable “carnival” feel to the table.

What’s a carnival without popcorn!? These popcorn cupcakes were such a hit and so incredibly easy to make. I took mini marshmallows and snipped the tops into 3 and 4 and stuck them onto the tops of the cupcakes. I sprayed the top with Wilton yellow spray and they were done! I just love how they turned out.