First Birthday | Train Party | Happy Mess MOMents

This past weekend we celebrated Caiden’s first birthday at Travel Town Museum. I still can’t believe my baby boy is ONE already! His actual birthday was on 9/10…so my little boy got 2 birthday parties this year. The first one was his “Indonesian” birthday party at our place-I’m gonna post those pics once Danny (my DH) uploads them.

This was my first time throwing a children’s party and I thought it was a success…but I did learn a few lessons. One: always have the food catered or get it from Costco! I definitely don’t ever want to deal with making food for his birthday parties if it’s more than 10 guests…it’s just too much, especially with a very active boy in my hands. 🙂 Two: since it gets extremely hot during his birthday month…I decided to keep his parties indoors (well…depending on the venue).
With all that said…let’s talk about Caiden’s Train Party! For the invitation, my original plan was to have a photo of Caiden playing with a wooden train…but because I procrastinated, it was too late. 🙁

Instead, I purchased the invitation from Anders Ruff via Etsy and it was exactly what I was looking for. I wanted the theme to be a vintage/train/picnic party because of the beautiful vintage trains on display in the park museum. At the same time, I wanted to stay far away from anything/everything Thomas the Train (sorry for those you like Thomas-I’m just staying away from characters)!! I chose the colors: red, navy, yellow and aqua. Hope you enjoy some of the pics from the party! Big thank-yous to Leah and Michele for taking pictures!

Invitation by Anders Ruff

Gable Box from Oriental Trading Company with party favors inside. Oh and I actually made the “Caiden express” label!

Not the best picture of the favor (taken at home by me). Party favors: train whistles from Amazon and “paint your own train” from Target. I put them in cello bags and sealed them with card stock and labels from Anders Ruff.

I love buying cake from Portos, they have the best flavors and the best prices! But, the only cake design with a train was Thomas (def didn’t want that), ugh! But the woman was so helpful and told me to just order that cake minus the Thomas the Train toys and just have a train track going across. It was perfect and I didn’t want them to write anything on it! I made the “Caiden is One” banner by downloading flags from here and thank-you again Leah for the wooden train.