Happy First Birthday Milo! (Ice Cream Party)

We decided on an ice cream themed party for Milo's First Birthday.  And I was determined to have this party on a bit of a budget.  It's hot here in Texas during the summer so ice cream, cold drinks and a kiddie pool were a necessity.  I ordered the invites off zazzle for super cheap.  I had spent over $50 on invites when we had our Christmas party last year so I knew I would be going the cheap route this time... i.e. I ordered 15 invites for under 10 bucks.  I don't have a cute real pic, but here is the crappy computer pic I took to send Matt for approval.  The actual ones turned out adorbs!

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Quick pic of the ice cream table (click pics to enlarge).  We've used that silver tub for just about every get-together we've had.  It's great for icing drinks, but this time I packed it with ice and loaded it up with a few types of ice cream.  I bought a few toppings like chocolate syrup, fruit and some sprinkles.  Colorful plastic bowls, plastic spoons and yummy cones were pretty much all we needed.  The table cloth is a remnant from a sewing project.  The napkins and bowls were on clearance at Target.  Cady and I made several garlands out of scrapbook paper and string we already had - so cute!

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The biggest splurge was probably the Nothing Bundt Cakes for an extra special dessert!  We love Nothing Bundt Cakes!  Everything they make is fabulous.  We bought the mini cakes for everyone and a mini bundt for Milo to eat.  We used the same scrapbook paper to cut out circles and put stickers on them with "1" and "Milo".  We then stuck them in the cupcakes with a toothpick.  A mini garland made out of the scrapbook paper topped Milo's smash cake.

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There were tons of friends that stopped by to say Happy Birthday to Milo.  We weren't sure how he'd react to everyone, but he was great!

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First Cake!  The excitement from the visitors and sugar rush from the cake caused this kiddo to crash just as the last person was leaving.  He couldn't even stay away to open presents so after a long nap, he woke up to a living room full of gifts to open!

Milo was blessed with clothes and games and toys and water toys.  What a great birthday!

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And because we weren't spending a ton on this party, we made our own Thank-You cards.  Everyone loved them and I wish we had made a bunch more just to send out in the future.  We took some pics of Milo playing in the pool, used our photo editing program to add some text and then printed them at Kinkos on a light card stock.  We had four different cards.  These are the pics we used, I had them printed and then cut them out of the paper leaving enough to fold behind creating a card (I was able to get 2 cards on each page of light cardstock).  I picked up a box of colorful envelopes for $5 (We only needed like 20 but it came with 50 so we've got left over for the future).

It was a fantastic First Birthday!  And it proves you don't need to spend a ton of money to have a cute kid party.