Hudson’s first birthday party – the big one

Hudson had his very first birthday party this past weekend. Oh how time flies! I can’t believe our sweet baby boy will be one on the 24th. We had the best morning celebrating with friends & family. Planning his first party was a blast! If you’ve been around for a while, you know party planning is something I enjoy doing. I’ve been thinking about this moment for months. Just a reminder, you don’t have to throw a huge party for your little one or feel like you have to have all these “things”to be a good parent. Your baby will love you no matter how small/big of a party you want to throw! This is just something I LOVE DOING. Growing up my mom put everything into planning our birthdays and it’s just something I’ve wanted to do for Hudson as well. We went with the theme “THE BIG ONE”. After countless hours of scrolling on Pinterest, I figured this theme would go perfect for our little beach baby! I ended up designing and making our shirts from my shirt shop “By The Sea Designs“. You can shop them HERE – ADULT SIZES & BABY/TODDLER AVAILABLE.

I purchased majority of decor from Etsy, Target, & Amazon. We like to keep it fun & a little budget friendly around here. They have so many affordable finds for parties. For invitations, signs, and paper cards, I always choose a template on Etsy. You can then edit the templates and get whatever you need printed off at websites like Office Depot, Zazzle, Small business card shops etc. Hudson’s “ONE” Banner on his high chair came from Etsy as well as the Volkswagen banner on the food table (I will link both of them here). The invitation template is linked here as well.

Our custom balloon installations for the front sign & on the back porch were from Balloon Bash Events. If you’re on the Gulf Coast and need a balloon arch for your upcoming event, they are the best around! They also installed our balloon arch for our gender reveal as well (gender reveal blog post linked here). Everything always turns out so beautiful and it’s just something about balloons that make a party so great! I’m always amazed and obsessed with their work & the owners are so sweet! Click HERE for their Instagram & HERE for website.

For food this time around, we decided to do a shrimp boil. The boys went to go grab shrimp off the boat the morning of & it ended up being such a hit! We also had a couple dips as appetizers & pigs in a blanket. For dessert, my mother in law made Hudson’s smash cake & cupcakes which Hudson LOVED. I also found a sweet lady named Brenda to make the yummiest cookies (I’ll link her page here). They were all gone by the time everyone left! She’s out of Ocean Springs, MS for anyone interested on the Gulf Coast.

Surprisingly the weather turned out to be PERFECT. I purchased two Target pools for the little ones to play in and a few bubble wands for entertainment. Hudson loved swimming around, playing with the beach balls, and all of his cousins. I ended up finding the clear beach balls and beige striped towels from Amazon which we will definitely be keeping around here. It ended up turning out so cute!

For the goodie bags, the wooden surfboard ornaments came from Amazon & “Thank You” tags from a template on Etsy. My good friend painted the surfboards the night before and they ended up looking adorable. It was super hard to find anything “surf” related for goodie bags but Amazon always comes through! We found some blue dum dum suckers to throw in there as well!

Overall Hudson had a fantastic party! He was so exhausted by the end of the day and took a three hour nap. Thank you to everyone who made his first birthday so special! Please feel free to leave a comment or follow my Instagram @trendykenziee for more day-to-day life as a mama. Thank you for reading!

Kenzie