For George’s birthday, I wanted to do a classic baseball theme. I found these signs at Hobby Lobby last fall (on sale), and that was what started my thought process of the party planning.
I have been collecting things over the past 6 months, and then the past month we made the last minute touches.
So here is a look at our celebration of George’s first year.
Let’s start with the decorations.
These were our centerpieces. I was able to get a pound of peanuts for $2 at our local grocery store. A pound goes a loooong way. Real baseballs were expensive, so I bought these stress balls instead for super super cheap. I think I got 24 for less than I could get one real baseball. We also had sunflower seed bags and Big League Chew gum that people could take. And of course a little Royals flair had to show up.
I really wanted to emphasize how far George has come, so the month to month pictures with the NICU picture was a must. The tags say “Rookie Year.” We made these with our Cricut and a punch out device.
We printed these large architecture prints at Staples for cheap. I took the first baseball one when he was a couple weeks old. The middle picture is one of our favorites, and he was 6 months then. The last one is from his invitation shoot when he was 11 months old. Tom and I made that dugout sign. When George graduates to a big boy bed, we are going to change his decor to a baseball theme, so this will eventually go in there. I will share how we did that later this week!
That mitt is actually a pool floatie that my sister-in-law found online.
I saw this autograph idea on Pinterest, and it was just too cute not to do. We made the sign using our Cricut and a pre-made scrapbooking sheet.
This is the cupcake stand. Tom made this, and I helped with the baseball stitches. I will share this soon too!
This scoreboard is another piece that will go in George’s room. It is a chalkboard sign, so eventually we see George playing with that as his imagination grows.
I found a picnic table cloth that looks like grass so we could do the cake smash on it easily instead of doing a high chair. My SIL got the idea to have a grandstand behind him once I told her about the grass. She found that wall hanging and the blow-up catcher on Zulily I believe.
For the food, we did hot dogs of course, but I wanted it to be pretty low key and easy to prepare. We also had popcorn, a fruit and veggie tray, cookies, Hostess cakes, ice cream, and cake pops.
We made this sign to make it be a “concession” stand.
We had it in our church gym, and the kitchen opens up nicely to add to the concession ambiance.
My SIL has a cookie lady who does an AMAZING job decorating cookies. Seriously, look at those things! We also found Hostess baseball cakes which are on our nicely made baseball theme cupcake stand. My father-in-law found the KC Royals peanut bags at a local grocery store, so obviously we had to have those added! I found the Royals napkins at party store here, and there are also regular baseball ones.
My SIL, the party planner, also has a cake pop lady, so yep these happened.
These were our party favors. I just made balls that say, “Thanks for Coming! Hope You Had a Ball!” I made them in Publisher and printed them out myself. Easy peasy. I got a bulk box of them off Amazon for like 10 bucks.
Since there are a lot of kids in our family, we knew we had to have something for them to do to get all the sillies out. So we had inflatable balls and bats just thrown all over the gym. They had a “ball.”
My SIL found these online in a 12 pack, which covered all the kiddos in case they didn’t want to share. And same with the baseball beach balls.
So I bought this little bloomer outfit when George was like 4 months old, and let’s just say it’s a good thing he only wore if for a couple hours. It was a tad snug. 
I mean this shirt was just calling my name. Especially when I got it for $4. He wore this after he dabbled in the icing.
Tom made the baseball cake.
Doesn’t the backdrop look awesome?
The nice thing about doing it at the church was that it had an industrial kitchen with a big sink perfect for hosing George down.
This is George’s great-grandma who is 96.
These are George’s only first cousins, one from my side and one from Tom’s. I love that we were able to have them both there!
Yes Tom is awesome for agreeing to match me in these baseball tees that were basically heat traps. Seriously so much sweat…
Tom and I love this little man. We are amazed by him every single day. We are so blessed, and we never knew how much our hearts would grow to let him in. I know George won’t remember this day, but this celebration was also to thank all of our family and friends for being there and supporting us in our first year as parents.
Can’t wait to see where year 2 takes us. We are oh so curious at what big things will happen.
Like talking. George said his first word this week. He said ‘mama!’
We had so much fun putting this baseball party together and celebrating George!
After drilling pilot holes in the ends of the bat, you can screw in the double ended dowels.
You will need three circles out of high grade plywood. They will all be different sizes. We actually used a precut for the bottom largest size. It was a precut lazy susan. We weren’t able to find the other two precut, so Tom cut the other two. For the smallest, he used a circle cutter bit. For the middle circle, he cut it out with a jigsaw. He centered a bolt through the middle, and he put it on his drill press (pictured below) to sand the edges while it was spinning.
Then Tom painted all the circles white.
Once the painting was done, we just pieced everything together with the dowel screws.
Tom used a lag bolt on the bottom to hold it together.
Then I used a paint pen and plates as my stencil to do the stitches.
There you have it. It is perfect for desserts, but I am sure George will find other fun things to put on this stand when the time comes.
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