I’ve been thinking a lot about airplanes this week. In a little under a month, we will be taking Onetime (my 2.5 year old son) on his first airplane flight! He is incredibly excited!
Needless to say, we have been reading airplane books, pretending to fly on airplanes (see our cardboard airplane pictures below!), and playing with lots of airplane toys to help prepare him for the journey.
All of this airplane activity got me remembering Onetime’s first birthday party. As a baby, Onetime noticed and pointed out airplanes. When I started teaching him sign language as a baby, “Airplane” was his first communicative sign!
We happened to live in a neighbourhood on the outskirts of town where the local airport would send their flight students to circle over before returning, so we got a lot of air traffic with Cessnas constantly flying overhead and Onetime never missed excitedly pointing them out!
We actually had a lot of fun visiting the local airport with Onetime when he was little too. We could walk right up to the side of the landing strips and on the weekend, could see small airplanes take off and land almost every minute right in front of us. Onetime was mesmerized.
We got to see this Cessna land right in front of us within minutes of first arriving at the airport!
That’s why we decided to make Onetime’s first birthday Airplane themed! It was a no-brainer. Just like the Train theme for his 2nd birthday party, but that will have to wait for now…
Airplane Party Decorating
I had a lot of fun decorating for the party! Sometimes I think I should have been a party organizer for my profession.
When guests arrived, they were greeted with this sign at the front door.
As they walked down the main hallway, they took a tour through Onetime’s first year. I printed off my favourite pictures of him from each of his first 12 months and wrote a little description of the new things he had done each month. (And no, I didn’t remember all these things…I kept a little journal throughout the first year).
For decorations, I blew up a bunch of white balloons and hung them from the ceiling with little wooden planes hanging as well.
Also, I provided helpful signs along the way for our guests!
Airplane Party Favors
I think I must have had the most fun putting together the party favours for our guests. The kids received little bags with globe bouncy balls, airplane kites, kids’ compasses and a wooden airplane to put together.
Adults received deluxe peanuts. Kind of scary that only a month later we found out that my son is severely allergic to peanuts!
To read more about our adventure with that, check out this post (D is for Dauntless) where I talk about trying to raise my son to be cautious, but not fearful about his allergy.
I made the tags for the party favour bags and peanuts with a custom rubber stamp that I made for Onetime by carving out a lino block. I also used that stamp on the party napkins.
Airplane Party Food
For food, we had a sandwich station with “Jet Fuel” punch. My favourite party snack were these “Propeller Pops” that I made from marshmallows dipped in Candy Melts with chocolate propellers.
It was really hard to get the propellers to not crack when putting them onto the marshmallow, and I had to eat many broken ones…..but they looked awesome don’t you think?
To make the airplane cake, I rented the mould and followed the icing suggestions. I had basically never iced a cake before and was pretty proud that it didn’t turn out to be a disaster!
The “cloud” cupcakes were my idea, and with almond-flavoured Martha Stewart buttercream icing – they were SOOOOO good!
After a fantastic party with that first taste of cake and way too many presents – our guests were asked to add their “wishes” for Onetime on this special scrapbook page with his handprint.
As a last token of thanks on the way out, each guest chose an airplane cookie to take with them. I kept things simple and just iced them in two shades of blue and red with white windows.
Thanks for flying through today!
And -be sure to join us again this Friday for a very special Awesome Airplanes Round-up feature post.
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