When I saw the movie Brave last summer I loved it, like LOOOOOOOVED it! It was funny, sad, heartwarming, entertaining, visually beautiful and it just really spoke to me. I mean didn’t we all have those memories with our moms in the teenage years where we just wanted to be listened too. And maybe it went both ways. Because while it wasn’t obvious from the previews Brave was a mother/daughter story and I thought that made it perfect for a birthday party theme for Evie. I figured that she wouldn’t care what the theme was and I’d rather save something like Alice in Wonderland for when she’s older and can ask for it herself. It made sense to strike while the iron was hot and the Brave party plates were still available at Party City.
I took a lot of inspiration from Pinterest and it seemed like maybe we were over reaching a bit with our creativity, but I was incredibly excited at how well everything came together. This is largely due to my amazing mother and sister who were able to help me carry out my vision. I am very good at concept, less so at execution. Since this was a one year old’s party we mainly focused on decorations and food. The kids present were a little young for faux archery or pin the wisp on the path, but you could have a lot of fun making up your own movie related games.
The invitations were incredibly adorable and a totally worthwhile purchase from Etsy.
We had planned for guests to been greeted by a row of blue balloons tied to blue sparkly weights leading them up the driveway like wisps. What seemed like gale force winds outside put an end to that. The wind was so strong it popped two balloons with 30 seconds of being outside! It’s a cool idea though right?
The food was fairly simple, pizza, fruit, veggies, but the cakes were incredible! My sister found a mini bear cake mold and made three decorated to look like little black bears (a la the triplets). It was a little dicey for a minute with the bears looking deranged, but Chels saved them and decorated the lazy susan they were on to appear like grass.
Instead of one big cake there were black bear cupcakes. They were amazing! A large cupcake formed the body with a mini cupcake as the head and oreo claws. Evie disappointed at first, rather than cramming the cupcake in her face straight off she delicately peeled off a oreo claw and ate that slowly 🙂 Once we unpeeled the cupcake though she got to town on that pretty quickly. We may have created a monster! The cupcakes were delicious to look at and delicious to eat made even more special by the grass patterned wrappers.
We had plush versions of the triplet bears that we had originally planned to just set on the table. The chandelier over the dessert table and our genius led to an even better idea. We suspended the mischievous bears from the chandelier as if they were rappelling down to the treats. So appropriate if you’ve seen the movie. Ironically it turned out very few of our guests had seen the movie and I’m sure it was lost on them. Us party planners were pretty pleased with ourselves though.
(Photo collage above by my sister!)
Green, blue and purple streamers served as decoration. And purple and blue party hats were decorated with the different clan emblems with guests being able to choose. Evie’s hat was special embellished with blue/green plaid ribbon and the three bear medallion Merida wears. I’m super proud of my grown up friends for wearing the hats 🙂
We did goodie bags but I wanted to avoid plastic junk. Everyone has enough crap in their houses I’m sure, I know we do! So I went with items that are consumable and usable. That meant blue cellophane bags tied with plaid ribbon containing mini bubbles with a heart on the wand (E is a pre Valentine’s Day baby), Brave stickers, teddy grahams (get it!) and our Pinterest inspired crayons! We chopped/hammered old crayons and put a multi colored mix into cupcake liners and baked at 275 for about ten minutes and got the coolest multicolored crayons. Functional and pretty. Helpful hint, soak the crayons in order to easily remove the wrappers. My mom had been hand peeling each dry crayon!
It was a wonderful party, and I’m glad everything looked and tasted good and matched our theme, but I’m even more glad we got to spend the day with wonderful family and friend celebrating Evie’s first year on Earth. And she didn’t have a single meltdown. This is a girl who enjoys a party! 🙂
Oz Images Photography 