A 1st Birthday 'Teddy Bear's Picnic!'

A few weeks ago, my darling, honeycomb-breathed, sometimes-cranky-pants son turned one. And what better a way to celebrate... than with a Teddy Bear's Picnic? My son Elliott was given a flat-out bear the day he was born which lay inside his capsule with him in the hospital and then in his cot when we came home thereafter. It has been in his arms ever since. I've talked about these miracle bears before, here and here but really they are worth their weight in gold. Or have been for us, anyway. And so. A tribute to Elli-Boo's love for his teddy it was!

then...

... and now

We held it up at Dan's parents' property because they could clean up afterward it is huge, beautiful, filled with flowers and animals and is altogether the perfect place for mums and dads to relax in the knowledge their children could run madly-about filled with cake and not do any damage!

Everyone was to bring a teddy-bear... of course! I wanted a picture of all the kids nestled on the picnic blankets holding their teddies but um, what was I thinking?! Good luck with that!

my dad...

We held the entire party outside which could have gone either way - but fortunately we were blessed with fine weather! Instead of running back and forth to the oven, we bought a big pile of pizza bases from a supplier and used an outdoor pizza oven to feed the masses. Worked a treat except that my poor mother in law and husband were stuck in front of a pizza oven all afternoon!

There were other party treats, of course...

Prior to the party, I whipped up an outdoor kids teepee and stuck it out in the middle of the grass with picnic blankets, a vintage cane pram, some cushions and lots of teddy bears, of course! There was also a $12 catarpillar tunnel which of course was a complete hit -- much more so than the tent I laboured over for days!!

The birthday boy
Before the party, I made Elliott a little "Scrabble tile" tee that read "Elliott Daniel is One" (forgot to get a good pic of this, oooops.) I also made matching father-son teddy-bear bow ties! Unfortunately, the birthday boy was a little out of sorts and was not up for family portraiture... this is the best I've got that can show you his costume!

Some of The little stuff
Just because clearly I had too much time on my hands, I bought some wooden teddy bear shapes I found in Spotlight for a few $$, attached some bamboo skewers and painted them with chalkboard paint. I then stuck them in paper cups and drew little messages for the kids on them for the party...

The kids loved the 'decorate a cupcake' stand...

I stuck some little yellow teddy puffy-bits I found at a craft store on some party hats...

Wondering what to do with all those 'monthly pic' pics you take? Well, I had mine all printed out and then laminated them, stringing them up like bunting at the party!

I hired a face-painter just for the fun of it... Elliott got a little teddy-bear drawn on his cheek but it only lasted about 5 minutes... oh well.

I bought some brown noodle-boxes and filled them with tiny-teddies biscuits (of course!), a few lollies and a couple of gimmicky-toys... ran out of inspiration (and time!) on the party boxes, folks! I printed a picture of Elliott and stuck it onto the front then tied the boxes with red grosgrain ribbon...

The cake
I had our friends from Bremen Patisserie make a large, flat teddy bear out of cake to look like Elli's flat-out bear. I think they did a really good job! On it, I added a string of cake-bunting I made and handstamped with Elliott's name from a tutorial I found here. I also made some 3D chocolate teddy bears, which you can just make out in front of the cake and which didn't quite pan out -- mine didn't quite look like the ones I saw on Etsy when I bought the instructions! Still, I added them and tied some red ribbon around their necks... surprisingly, the kids loved them and gobbled them up before I had a chance to tell them that fondant does not taste quite as good as it looks! The cake was yum. Well, that's the word on the street, anyhow. My son liked it, clearly. As did the other kids. But after the party, the family border-collie thought she would have a go, too and made short work of what was left! Doh...

elli and Auntie Louise, who flew in from Brisbane just to surprise me. And I was surprised!

Some random beautiful images that captured the day:

I hope you enjoyed Elliott's first birthday party..... x