Flamingo Party • A Fabulous First Birthday

When Yasmin was born my sister and brother in law fell in love with a pink stuffed fluffy flamingo and hoped that would be her comforter, but she soon decided that a little monkey was going to be her stuffed pal for life! 

However, the flamingo theme was well and truly set for her joint first birthday and Christening party and she loved it! A trip to Monkey World on her actual birthday meant we covered all bases!

It was such a pleasure helping to plan a pink party - with two boys I don't see a lot of pink balloons in this house! Stacy, the amazing creative talent behind Style My Party helped bring the theme to life with their new range of flamingo decorations and party accessories and we have had so much fun sourcing what feels like almost every flamingo party product on the planet!

My brother and sister in law flew back from America for just 48 hours armed with a suitcase full of goodies we found online in the US and my sister's house started to look like an enclosure at Bird World!

The vibrant colours made the hall look so cheerful and bright. Pool party colours of pinks and turquoise blue. 

I was overwhelmed by how much all the guests appreciated all the little details, the cupcake picks, the food labels, the DIY photo booth! All the effort over the little details was worth every late night and car load of party goodies. Everyone loved the 6ft tall card spinner full of photos from Yasmin's first year!

The games went down a storm with all the children and it meant all the adults could socialise with happy children!

If you are looking for flamingo themed games try these:

• Flamingo Hop - We laid out a piece of plastic on the floor my sister had left over from work, but you could use coloured tape to mark the start line instead. Everyone had to hop as far as they could - like the long jump then mark their name on the plastic. But you could add an extra bit of tape to write on which would look just as good. Style My Party created brilliant masks too! 
• Flamingo Golf - Plastic golf balls from Poundland and flamingo plastic grabbers from Bird World for clubs made the perfect mini golf! I recycled a piece of wipe clean tablecloth from Sammy's pet party 2 years ago and used 2 baskets, turned on their sides, from the boy's play room as the holes. I stuck a balloon and a flamingo through the handles of the basket and all the kids loved it. There were balls flying everywhere!
• Tissue paper flamingos - It's always good to have a quiet craft as a game at a party for children who may not want to join in the more physical activities. Plus they often occupy the children for longer! We drew an outline of a flamingo and scanned it into the computer, printed lots of copies and laid out pots of glue and brushes and coloured tissue paper. The children then scrunched little pieces to create a flamingo collage.
• Hook a flamingo - I seem to always manage to have a hook a duck at parties and even though it means you have to drag a paddling pool of water through a hall at clearing up time, they are always really popular. I found flamingo ducks online from Oriental Trading and we marked a few with a number 1 on the bottom. If you netted a number 1 duck you won a little packet of sweets. 

I would definitely recommend a DIY photobooth too. You capture such fun images and it only take a few people to go first for everyone else to join in the fun!

All I used were tinsel curtains which you can buy online or in most party shops. The are relatively cheap but have great impact! Raid your kids dressing up boxes for props and place a basket by the curtains so people can help themselves. My tip would be to hang two or three curtains if you want to create a wider booth or crop your photos tight afterwards in edit, so the curtain fills the background. 

The buffet table was decoration in itself and I tried to make all the food more interesting by displaying dishes in different plates and at different heights. I used upturned boxes, the kid's chairs and made a backdrop from a pink blanket! I used my photography backdrop frame and used bulldog clips to secure the blanket. But you could make your own frame with garden plant pots for weights and garden canes for the frame.

The Style My Party tassel bunting and all the printed picks and food labels brought it all to life.

The cake from Creative Cakes by Vickie stole the show as the centre piece, but psst it was all polystyrene! A much cheaper way to have a beautiful cake and we had so much cake in the buffet it would have been wasted. It was still a luxury as it was professionally iced but it's a great idea for you to try at home! They cut the top tier of their wedding cake and we all sang happy birthday to a quite bemused little one year old who coped amazingly well with all the attention from 80 guests!

The birthday girl handed out her thank you cards in her new pram from Auntie, designed by Style My Party and we attached a pair of Flamingo glasses to each one!

I adored the huge balloons from Style My Party and the balloon tassels looked incredible. Be warned they do take an enormous amount of helium but they would look fabulous blown up with a pump and tied to walls or the ceiling. I bought the letter balloons from Bubblegum Balloons and they have little holes to enable you to string them up as bunting too. They made a great feature for the drinks table and we couldn't resist posing for a last photo of the day!

You will be able to buy all the printed products online at Style My Party very soon! Thank you for providing all the lovely bits for Yasmin which helped make the party such a success!