Fun 1St Birthday Ideas???

Did you pick a theme for her party? That may help with deciding what to cook, etc. Chicken tenders are always a hit with mac n cheese.

Check out this site! It's great for ideas:

http://familyfun.go.com/parties/parties-by-age/toddler-pa...

In Korean tradition, you lay out a bunch of things for the baby to pick on her 1st birthday and depending on what she picks, it predicts her future. i.e., if you pick a pencil, she'll be academic, pick a stethoscope, she'll be a doctor, pick a string, she'll have long life, pick a ball, she'll be an athlete, etc. you can choose whatever objects you want. make it even more fun by having a raffle, all the guests predict before hand what object she'll pick and write it down, put it in a bucket for that item (i.e. the "pencil" bucket). if she picks the pencil, pull out a ticket from that pencil bucket and the winner gets a small gift.

Hi, For our daughters first birthday, we did sloppy joes, chips, and punch so that way it was kid friendly and adult friendly. We had little bags of candy to take home for thank you treats.
I think other finger foods you could use are little sandwiches, little smokies, cookies...stuff like that.
I guess I didn't make a special dessert or cake. We just store bought both since I had so much to do and did most of it myself.
What theme are you thinking? If you are creative and such you could make her favorite character cake maybe or brownies.
Good luck, happy holidays, and have fun!

I think just a veggie tray and fruit salad would be good sides. Martha Stewart's website has a good mac and cheese recipe, but you should make it first and see if your daughter likes it. I make a homemade mac and cheese that's very similar to that recipe and the adults in the family rave about it and request it (I even made it for my brother's rehearsal dinner) but my 4 year old son doesn't really care for it. He prefers mac and cheese from a box. Although, he does like some mac and cheese from restaurants that aren't the box kind. I think the key is to have a very cheesy sauce, not a "baked" kind of mac and cheese.

One thing that's popular for first birthdays is to have a big cake for the guests and a "smash" cake for the birthday girl. That way she can put her hands and face in it for cute pictures but you don't have to worry about messing up the whole cake.

Cupcakes are a big hit for the little ones. You could arrange them in flower shapes on a board or make them like balloons (if you get what I mean). The familyfun site has great cupcake ideas, too.

Cut up fruit works for everyone also on the side.

Mostly, my advice is to have fun and don't stress!

Party at home where we were comfortable with the most important people to us. Dont go too crazy on details considering she will not remember it. I think the 1st bday is really for the parents, so do what you want and whats comfortable. I have a good mac n cheese recipe if you want it. Take tons of pics!!

For food I would also go with chicken nuggets or hot dogs or little smokies. Fruit is good and veggies and dip too. Depending upon how many people you have you can decide between cake and cupcakes. I like the idea of cake, but our parties are usually pretty big and I'm not so into the idea of slicing all that cake, so I usually go with cupcakes! Either one is great though. For both my kids' first b-days I did something that went with thte theme for all the guests to sign and write a little message on and then I can save it as a keepsake. My daughter's theme was dogs so we had an autograph dog and my son's theme was balls so I did a mini baseball that I now deflated and put with other 1st bday memorabilia.