first let me start with special thanks to melissa from so wonderful, so marvelous for many of the ideas. my other great friend melissa for designing the party invitation and being the photographer for our cake smash session. and lastly my cousin rachel for the invitation wording idea. lets get started...
here's the invitation... it was printed on heavy photo cardstock with a 5x7 ready to frame picture of nathan on the back.
a few weeks before his actual birthday, we had a cake smashing photo shoot for memoir sake.
here was the birthday boys party attire. the stovetop hat i made and the shirt was purchased on etsy.
his gifts from mom and dad were 3 dr seuss dvds i picked up at target ($5 each!) and a new swing for our swingset in the backyard.
this is pretty self explanatory ;) cat in the hat cupcakes, starbelly sneetches cupcakes, one fish two fish cupcakes and just cotton candy cupcakes. word of caution with the cotton candy, it melts in about 1 hr. so put it on shortly before you plan on serving them.
food... we kept it simple. pull apart pork sandwiches, potato salad, chips and salsa, and lemonade.
favor bags... i made 25 stovetop hats, found the swirly suckers on oriental trading, the horton socks and mini notepads were from the target dollar section MONTHS ago, color goldfish crackers, made toothfairy bags, and found a dr. seuss activity book that i shrunk down in size and printed out. the cat in the hat tags on the gift sacks were also from oriental trading.
my decor was anything bright in color. tried to stick with red, blue, orange, and lime green. i found the plates/napkins at the dollar tree with coordinating plastic tablecloths. i wanted huge balloons! i found 36 inch ones (standard is 12 inches) at party city and tied them to my centerpieces down the center of each table. my centerpieces were dr seuss stuffed characters i picked up at kohls. $5 each w/ coordinating book :) i found the idea on melissas blog for the sign-in book. i found a happy birthday to you dr seuss book at barnes and noble. i printed up a sign that read... "WAIT! stop here you see, and write a very special message to me! a birthday wish, or just say hi, to your very favorite one year old guy. on the front, or back, or any pages. it will be something i will treasure all my ages."
of course the cat in the hat himself watched over our party. he stood over 5 ft. tall and was made out of cardstock. also found that at oriental trading. the birthday banner i made myself just using scrapbook paper. i found a dr seuss font called grinched for the letters and used the remaining cat in the hat tags as spacers. now here's the best and worst idea i came up with. i wanted to make a "bunting" (aka flag banner) that would wrap around the entire picnic shelter. in the end i absolutely LOVED it! but it was SUCH a pain to make! the picnic shelter was around 200 ft all the way around. that would have required LOTS ($40 worth) of bias tape. so i made bias tape the old fashion way, with 3 yds. of white fabric cut and sewn into one SUPER long 2 inch strip and a steaming hot iron. the flags were 7 1/2 inches wide and i had 12 yds of bright colorful fabrics in stripes and polka dots. it took me about 4 days to make the whole thing, LOL. 
he loved opening presents and especially all the tissue paper! on the invitation i had put no gifts required! santa was very generous with nathan this year! with christmas being a month ago, this boy really didn't need much of anything. but if they must bring a gift, he is in need of clothes and books for the coming year. and that's all he got :) lots of adorable and awesome outfits and many many cool books!
just a few of the guest...
all in all there were 50 people total who came to show their love for my baby boy, who isn't a baby anymore :( i am SO thankful to have such great friends and family who drove many hrs. to attend. can't wait to do this again next year! now to start thinking of a theme....lol...
