Wildflower 1st Birthday

Happy one year to our little wildflower, Miss Lilliana Rose!

In this post I am going to share with you how we threw Lilly a beautiful, budget friendly and low waste wildflower themed 1st birthday party! It was also entirely vegan and gluten free. As you probably know by now I am a vegan mom raising a vegan baby and we try to eat a low gluten diet. Don’t worry though, everyone still LOVED the food and went back for seconds and even thirds!

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Highchair Banner

Aside from the food, the highchair banner was probably the item we spent the most money on for the party. We ordered the glittery “One” banner on amazon which can be ordered here. The flower garland was made using flowers from hobby lobby. This was so simple to make and can easily be customized to match your style or theme!

All I did to make this was take some thick ribbon and wrap it tightly around the chair. Then I attached all of the greenery using fishing line. Once I had everything where I wanted it, I secured it with hot glue. Then I went through and attached the flowers with hot glue as well. After that I tied the “One” banner on using the string provided in the kit. When we arrived at the party location I attached command clips to the highchair for extra support.

That’s it! You can make a highchair banner using this method to match any theme.

Note: We have the Ikea Antilop highchair. It’s easy to clean, breaks down easily for travel and is doesn’t take up much space at all. It is also very affordable bought new, but we were fortunate enough to find one used on Facebook Marketplace for only a few dollars. I love secondhand shopping for most items, because it’s budget friendly and is better for the environment!

Milestone Photo Wall

This part was probably the hardest part of the entire party! You know how much I am NOT a planner and this project was definitely something that should have been planned and executed way in advance. (You’d be surprised how hard it is to identify which photo goes with which month.) However, in true Katrina fashion I was making this at my mom’s house until 11pm the night before the party. We were both in panic mode, a mess of scissors, tape, fishing line and pieces of fake flowers. The fishing line rolled up on us, the tape stuck to itself and photos flew all over the place. It was like a scene out of comedy movie. We even ended up assembling parts of it during the party, because some of the photos were still needing to be picked up at the photo shop the morning of! Que face palm!

In hindsight this display was probably not the best idea for an outdoor party. The wind was blowing it all around as we were attaching each string to the sticks. Imagine showing up to the party and there are 9 people. Yeah, you read that right, nine people, rushing around fighting the wind and yelling out “How old was she here??” (Another scene from the comedy movie starring us.) Photos were flying all over the pavilion and flowers were falling off and entire strands kept coming undone. Memories were definitely made with this project. In the end though it turned out beautiful and was a huge hit, making it worth all the struggle to make it happen!

If you are interested in making this yourself it is actually quite simple if you are a planner and someone who is much craftier than me!

To make this I picked out about 10 photos from every month newborn to 12 (this will give you 13 rows). I laid them all out in the order I wanted them displayed and taped then them to the fishing line leaving about an inch of space between each photo. (By me, I mean my mom taped the photos to the fishing line, as previously stated until 11 the night before and again at the party as guests were arriving. Que second face palm!)

Note: If I were to make this again I would use double sided tape and tape the same photo back to back. The strings turned around and would leave you looking at the back of a photo.

Next I took some of the leftover flowers and leaves from the highchair banner and tied them to the fishing line in long strands to match the length of the photos. When we arrived at the party all we did was tie the top of each strand to one long branch and the bottom to a second long branch. We hung the top branch from the rafters of the pavilion before we started stringing the strands up.

Food

For the food we decided to keep it simple. It was very hot and we decided light refreshments were best.

Fruit

  • Watermelon
  • Grapes (Green and Red)
  • Honeydew
  • Cantaloupe
  • Strawberries
  • Blueberries
  • Pineapple

Vegetables

  • Carrots
  • Celery
  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Sliced red and green bell peppers
  • Cucumbers
  • Broccoli

Extras

  • Chips with guacamole and salsa (We bought all the avocados days in advance to make a big batch of guac and for the first time in avocado history they were not ripe enough! Facepalm number 3!)
  • Homemade ranch (I found the recipe on Pinterest)
  • Cupcakes and cake (More on these below)

Drinks

  • Water
  • Lemonade
  • Iced Tea

Cake and Cupcakes

Since Lilly was only a year old we decided to find a recipe for the cupcakes and cake that were not only vegan and gluten free, but also low in sugar and free of artificial flavors and dyes. We found a recipe on Pinterest that used maple syrup and applesauce for sweetener and then we adjusted it to make it gluten free and vegan.

For the icing we made a simple coconut whipped cream. To make this put a can of full fat coconut milk in the refrigerator over night. Scoop the thick part out into a bowl. (Be careful not to get any of the liquid or this will not set up properly.) Add vanilla and maple syrup and beat on a high setting until desired consistency. Don’t over mix it or it will become too thin. For the chocolate we added cacao powder. We immediately topped the cupcakes with the icing and put them in the fridge. Lastly, we topped with a strawberry slice after they set up in the fridge for a few hours.

We made the cake the night before and on the morning of the party we discovered it was rock hard! (Facepalm number 4?) We quickly improvised and Calvin whipped up a batch of gluten free, vegan pancakes! We used the coconut icing to hold the stack together and covered it in Lilly’s favorite fruit, strawberries! I ended up liking this idea even more and it was a huge hit with the guests. As you can see from the photos above, Lilly loved it and wanted to share with everyone. We found the “one” candle and cake topper on Amazon.

Tableware and Decorations

For the drinks we used big glass beverage dispensers like this one. Fortunately, we were able to borrow these from a family member, but these are a great investment to have. We found the paper cups and napkins at the dollar tree along with adorable bowls that matched the theme and the honeybee book perfectly! We ordered the “One” plates from Amazon here. The plastic silverware we happened to have left over (in the future I plan to find a party set of metal silverware from the thrift store to reduce plastic waste) and we found the paper straws on Amazon here.

For decorations we kept it simple by hanging a few tissue paper pom poms . On each table we displayed thrifted glass bottles that we already owned filled them with fresh peonies out of Lilly’s grandparents garden! We also used some flower themed art from Lilly’s nursery to make it a little more sentimental and budget friendly.

Party Favors and Memory Book

We decided to give away succulents that I propagated off of succulents from my own plant collection as a sweet party favor. We found tiny terra cotta pots at the dollar tree and planted the succulents a month in advance to ensure they would root.

We found this adorable book The Honeybee on Amazon that was absolutely perfect for the theme! We had everyone sign the book and leave a little message for the birthday girl to read as she gets older. This book is so cute and has fun little rhymes to teach about pollination. The artwork is so beautiful too!

For the signs, we found some cute wooden picture frames at Target. I designed the messages on Canva and taped them to some pretty floral scrapbook paper. You can download the signs below!

The party ended up being amazing! The birthday girl had a great time and the guests all had nice things to say about it. We are so grateful to have had all our friends and family around to celebrate our daughters first year of life. It was so much fun to reminisce all the wonderful moments we had with Lilly during her first year and we are so excited to see what year one brings! If you use any of these ideas, please tag me so I can see! You can find me on Instagram at www.instagram.com/itsmekatrinalee

Let’s wrap this up with a quick little walk down memory lane… she was so tiny!

Thanks for stopping by!

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