This wonderful post was submitted by a “Raining Hot Writer” (read more about how you can write a frugal and helpful article and get paid for it here). Thanks to Ellie Bluebell’s House for these ideas and so many more….What creative ides these are! My favorite is the paper chains – definitely using that one!

A child’s first birthday is sweet, momentous, and exciting… and also noteworthy because it’s the last birthday party you will have full creative control over.  After the first birthday, you’ll be filling requests for SpongeBob SquarePants themes, skating parties, and the ultra dreaded eight eight-year-olds sleepover.  So have your druthers with number one!

I was very excited about making decorations for Natalie’s first birthday, and I proceeded to Martha Stewart out, big time.  I love those penant-flag banners you’ve seen popping up at cute places, like the Paper Source, and decided I could make one myself, much longer than the kit would allow, and for less than they were charging.  My craft closet was already full of the supplies, after all.

I also thought of making paper chains, like we used to do as kids to count down for Christmas.  Those things give you a lot of bang for your buck, time and materials-wise!  I got five designs of scrapbooking paper (two double sided and one single sided) and started cutting them into 2″ x 6″ strips with my awesome paper cutter, the Handy Guillotine (that is it’s actual product name.  I would have bought it anyway but I delight in calling it the Handy Guillotine every time I use it.  Best $19 I have ever spent). Then all you need is a stapler, and you’re in paper-chain-making business.

Total cost of 16′ of paper chains, $4 (for scrapbooking paper).

Then I folded each flag’s tab over my natural colored yarn and secured it with craft glue.

I think the thing most people get excited about for first birthdays is the baby’s first cake experience.  The guests, anyway.  They want to see smashing, grabbing, throwing, and sugar rushes.  As a mom, I was thinking, once she tastes frosting, my homemade sweet potatoes are history!  She’s gonna get frosting in her hair/on the walls/in her ears/on the dog/inside the heat registers!

It’s yellow cake, from a mix, with white frosting, from a tub.  That’s the actual name of the flavor: White.  A drop of red food coloring, and some sparkly pink sprinkles brought it up to Very First Birthday Cake status.

So for the rest of the guests… cuppycakes!

Coconut and Birthday Cake flavors. I used a semi-homemade approach to these, and doctored up a white cake mix (again, how is “White” a flavor?) with coconut milk and some other things as recommended by this recipe on Allrecipes.com.

Total cost of  cake and 36 cupcakes, $16 (including fancy $4 sprinkles and $2 candle from Mrs Cook’s).