Cheerios First Birthday Party

I can't believe my little monkey is one already!  We had a birthday for him last weekend, and it turned out really cute.  The theme was Cheerios.  I got the idea from here, but I added some details. Here's the party!

Let's start with the super-cute sign that my husband made.  It all started when I decided to use pipe cleaners to spell out CHRISTIAN in capital letters.  I didn't know what I was going to do with it, but I knew I wanted it somewhere.  Right when I got to CHRIST, Josh said, "You should make it in cursive", to which I replied, "How about you make it in cursive."  So he did.  Then my mother-in-law suggested the bead board backing, and voila! 

Josh glued the panels of pre-finished bead board together (Home Depot), and used a piece of cardboard to reinforce it since we didn't have time to frame it properly.  He's such a handsome crafter!

Here it is mid-glue:

Ok, onto the food.  We had the chocolate cupcake with white icing and Cheerios, and the Cheerios box cake made by a local baker.  But I was sure to tell everyone at the party that I made it myself.  No one believed me.

All of the food had Cheerios in it, one it, or it resembled a Cheerio!  It was so much fun, and I got some of the recipes from the Cheerios website.  Here's some Cheerios parfaits that my mom made:

Mini-bagel sammies (I used tuna salad, egg salad, and cheese spread for the adults)...

and PB&J for the kiddos.

I put glazed donuts in a large white bowl with a huge spoon and powdered sugar (to look like milk) to create a giant-sized bowl of Cheerios...

and the table was decorated with little pipe-cleaner Cheerios hearts.

 The drinks were served in a large galvanize bucket (what else?).  I splurged on glass bottle cokes to add a little nostalgia.

The room was decorated with white and yellow-with-white-polka-dot balloons, Cheerios garland, and red, white, and yellow paper decorations. 

The flag banner is made with all those Cheerios boxes that I used.

The big 1 was made using a multi-colored number 1 pinata from the party store.  I ripped off as much tissue paper as I could, spray painted it white, covered it with white paper, and glued on all those Cheerios.  It took several hours over several sittings to get it done, but it was worth it!

Since the party was indoors, I created a craft table for the kids.  The kids glued colored Cheerios to mini canvases and made pipe-cleaner jewelry.

  I dyed cheerios with spray-on food coloring (to avoid soggy Cheerios).

The craft table was a big hit, surprisingly.  The kids sat for quite some time and had fun making jewelry for the adults. 

The centerpiece for the table turned out cute as well.  I spray painted cardboard letters from Joann's to spell out ONE.  We tried to glue them together, and we were using the ribbon scraps to hold them in place to dry.  It looked kinda cute so Suzanne (my mother-in-law) made cute little bow-ties out of them and we left them on.

I used white chocolate melts and Cheerios to create these mini spoon favors.

Here's Christian tearing one up!

I picked up some Cheerios holders from the grocery store and used them as balloon weights.  Then we gave them away as favors for the kids, and they got to take a few balloons with them as well!

I think little monkey had a great time!

After all that hard work, Mommy finally got a break!

Linking up here...