Henry's 1st Birthday Party

We had Henry's first birthday party the day before his birthday, on Saturday 20th. Although we kept the numbers to an absolute minimum and only had very close friends and family, we still ended up with 25 people coming! I'm so glad we didn't invite anyone else though, we knew everyone who came so well, so we didn't feel stressed or harassed; we knew everyone would help themselves to whatever they needed and so we were able to just enjoy every minute of our little one's birthday celebrations.

We got most of the food from M&S, which I can't recommend highly enough. I then made some cupcakes and scones to go with it, as well as Henry's owl birthday cake. With the party being at 4pm, we had an afternoon tea theme with the food: finger sandwiches, cakes, tarts and scones. 

We had an owl theme for the party, mainly because Henry's nickname is Pigwidgeon, after Ron's owl in Harry Potter. I decided to do an egg and dairy free owl birthday cake for Henry too. Originally I was going to buy a cake but I felt really sad that Henry (and I) wouldn't be able to eat any...especially with it being his birthday after all! So I found a great vegan chocolate cake recipe and it was actually really simple to do.

In terms of decorations we had lots of balloons around the place and I'd also ordered some Polaroid style photos from Polargram which we strung up around the house. I really recommend Polargram too, the photos were £12 for 48 and they came directly from my Instagram account which made ordering so easy. Everyone commented on how lovely they were too and I'm going to put them away in Henry's memory box now the party's over.

We had such a lovely time and I'm so glad we were able to celebrate Henry's birthday with so many lovely people. Like I say, it wasn't remotely stressful and we made lots of happy memories with family and friends. I dare say it'll probably be the calmest of Henry's birthday parties...I'm positively dreading his 5th birthday party...5 year old boys really are a special breed!! Oh well, I have a little time to prepare myself before then.