John Deere Birthday Decorations

My recently single mom sister was planning a John Deere birthday party for her son who was turning one. To get uberly emotional on you guys she had a son die just after his first birthday not but a few years ago. We didn't get to throw him a big 1st birthday bash so it was majorly important for me, and I'm sure for her, to make this one extra special. The problem is being a single mom on one income (with no child support I might add) put a limit to what we could buy. It didn't, however, put a limit on what we could do! The first thing I did was go to Google, I typed in John Deere 1st birthday invites. I grabbed the a view and she picked this one;

I copy/pasted it and went through power point to get a personal picture in there. I cropped a piece of the yellow color out and used it to fill a square covering the original words. That gave me a blank canvas to write where our party would be and who it would be for while still leaving the John Deere effect.

Next we had to decide what the food was going to be like. We rented out a beautiful, and inexpensive, pavilion with a brand new park next to it and two ponds on either side. It had a grill so we went with hot dogs.

Tip #1: Hot dogs, especially for outdoor, park parties are PERFECT for the partier on a budget. Get all the goods to go with 'em and no one will be complaining!

Next my sister decided to go with a candy bar, which I was thrilled about because I'm doing a candy bar at my daughters party and already had the jars! The star attraction was personalized Hershey bars. I once again googled for a Hershey bar template, after I found one I turned it into John Deere colors and threw some awesome statements on it using power point word art. Here's the image before printed;

Tip #2: Print one, cut it out, make sure it fits right. Mine were a little too long and there was nothing I could do about it because there were letters in the way.

Once printed and cut use glue stick glue because it feels the closest to the real wrapper when you peel it off. My husband, God bless him, helped me glue all of these (30) together. Here's a glimpse of what they looked like as we were working;

Tip #3: Even though you know not everyone is going to show up make sure you have a candy bar for everyone. There are freak situations where people who said they couldn't come do, and others bring friends. The worst thing that could happen would be the bowl is empty before everyone gets there! The best thing that could happen is you have some left to remember the party by. And by remember I mean eat when you get home!

Here's the finished product on the Hershey's bars. I got the bowl for them at the Dollar Tree and through some ribbon I bought half off from Hobby Lobby. You can't see it in this picture but all the candy containers and bowls had tags on them that I downloaded from Google image and photo shopped to say what I wanted them to say. It's the little things that send people home talking about how awesome the party was!

Now here is the jars we used next to the end result of the candy bar. I got little claws for everyone to use from Hobby Lobby using a 40% off coupon and some smaller ones from the Dollar Tree. There was too much candy so my sister used it as decoration as well. She still had two bags left when we were done but it worked out well with Halloween right around the corner.

For the candy bar we obviously needed something for everyone to be able to load up and take it all home with them. I found these large green bags at WalMart but they were actually too big so I cut them down a little and hot glued a personalized tag thanking everyone for coming.

To go along with this all these decorations is green and yellow plastic table clothes, similar colored balloons, and hand made happy birthday signs. They didn't fair too well in the wind, but lesson learned next time I'll bring better tape!

Now my favorite part of this whole party is the box you see with the cake on top. The reason this is my favorite is because that is a shoe box wrapped in black plastic table cover with a home printed JD sign on the front. I've made so many more sense this party. I've double a couple up to make two tiers for cupcakes with ribbon wrapped toilet paper rolls as the pillars! AND I'm still using the same table cover...a little goes a long way.

Now this my sister thought of because buying a blow up toy that holds balls you find at Chucky Cheese is actually quite expensive, but WalMart sells the balls sseparately for $10 a bad and she bought this little blow up pool for like $5. It was cheap and kept the tiny ones entertained while the big kids played on the play ground.

So no matter how much money you have or don't have you can have an amazing birthday party! If you don't have much of an imagination find a friend or family member that does. If you can't find one come to my blog, if none of my blogs help you shoot me an e-mail and I'll help you out with some ideas!

Thanks for reading, God bless!