Baseball Party

The little guy is now the big boy!! Already one! We had a great time with friends at his party the other weekend. For all of our little princess's birthdays, Tommy didn't really have much say about theme or activities. Not that he minded. :)  But for his son's first birthday I wanted him to choose the theme and he was pretty specific. At Christmas my parents gave Tommy a baseball and Little Boy immediately picked it up and gave it a throw. So it was only natural to have a baseball themed party and Tommy asked that the decor revolve around the Atlanta Braves in particular. So I used a lot of red and blue (the team's colors) and anything with the Braves logo I could find.


I made easy invitations by tracing a CD on white cardstock. I bought red embroidery thread and laced it through to make a baseball. I made a template by poking holes with the needle where I thought the stitching looked like a baseball. Then I wrote the info on the middle.

The banners were from the same template I used for the pink and green party The Princess had for her second birthday. So easy! I used the red embroidery thread from the invitations to string it all together.

I had grand dreams of making baseball cakepops...they looked so cute and easy on Pinterest!! But my trial run was a disaster and I didn't have loads of time to perfect the technique so we passed for this party. But I will try again!! We settled for two cakes: a baseball (using Twizzlers) and a baseball diamond with marshmallow bases and graham cracker crumb dirt.

I ordered some of the favors from Oriental Trading Co and found the rest at Zurchers. The popcorn containers were at Hobby Lobby. I filled them with mini baseballs, pencils with baseballs on them, bubblegum, and baseball stickers. To give them some weight, I put popcorn kernels in the bottom of the containers. :)
All the guests signed the baseball so we have a keepsake.

The food!! I wanted to keep with the baseball/stadium theme so we served hot dogs (and Polish dogs) on buns, nachos, popcorn, Cracker Jacks, peanuts, and carrots and grapes (not ballpark fare but I felt we needed something healthy). Root beer, Coca-Cola (since it's based in Atlanta), and water was available. I also set out Baby Ruth bars.

Not a lot of games are out there for one year olds but the older kids had fun with pin the ball on the baseball bat and I had a Braves trivia game for the adults. I know the bat is bigger than regulation. I'm not the most artistic person and I didn't want it too small for the kids. I heard many comments that it looks like a drumstick or cricket bat...we do the best we can!!!

Because of where we live, I couldn't find loads of Braves stuff. I ordered an iron-on logo for the front of the birthday boy's onesie and I got an iron-on '1' for the back. I found Braves napkins at Oriental Trading Co. But most things were just red and blue, which means I can reuse them for July 4. :)
I borrowed some books about baseball from the library and displayed those with the ball to autograph, baseball cutouts and confetti stars from Zurchers. The wall hanging lists all the MLB teams and will one day go in Big Boy's room along with the baseball bank.

We had a great evening and it was so fun to celebrate our little rookie with some wonderful friends. The final 'hooray' came when Bethany showed me the prize from the Cracker Jack bag: an Atlanta Braves sticker!!! WOW!! I'm putting that in his scrapbook.