Our last baby turned ONE! I’m still in shock which is why this wasn’t posted for a few years. Better late than never, right? I love running with a good theme, and this one was just too cute to let the details slide. Let me be clear, however.... a one year old does not care about a themed birthday party. They don’t care if the invitations are adorable, they won’t notice the themed food, the on-point signs, and coordinating colors. So I’m acknowledging that the “cute” part of the party was alllllll for me. If all you have to give after making it through a year of sleep deprivation and feeding troubles and that really sad urgent care visit, IT IS OKAY. Your baby just wants to be snuggled. And probably won’t mind their first taste of sugar, either.

You can read all about the Max costume I made and invitation planning on my last post, but I wanted to show off some of the fun party details. This party feels like a lifetime ago, but thankfully it’s a timeless theme that will work for years to come! We started with the invitation that I showed my last post.

We were hosting quite a few people, so I kept the menu simple: chicken pinwheel sandwiches from Costco, meatball sliders, my very favorite homemade Caesar salad, fruit, and other snack items like pretzels and trail mix. We had beverages available in tubs and lemonade in dispensers available for guests to serve themselves.

I kept the food on-theme with details like framed quotes from the book (“from around the world he smelled good things to eat”), character food tags, and serving dishes wrapped with images from Maurice Sendak’s beloved book. Adding wrapped labels and using themed place cards is an easy way to adapt any theme to a party!

My absolute favorite detail was this watermelon boat with a sail made from book images. I didn’t want to destroy a book, so I just found the images online and resized the image to fit my needs before printing on my home printer.

To keep the bugs at bay, we kept all the food inside the kitchen, but our kitchen opens right up to our back deck with plenty of seating for everyone. The dessert table was set up in the family room, just to keep the kiddos from grabbing cupcakes before the birthday boy.

I pulled our existing plants from all over the house and used the small plants by the food spreads and large plants out on the back deck to add to our wild theme. I already owned this tiered cupcake stand and cake pedestal that I used to display the desserts. I purchased palm napkins and table runner at Home Goods — I definitely got lucky! Once again, I utilized a book quote (“to gnash with your terrible teeth”) and added a framed photo of the birthday boy in his Max costume.

I purchased a plain burlap bunting and used sharpie to add “Wild One.” I used ribbons I had in my craft closet to make it a bit more fun — always add a printed ribbon in with your solids!

I made homemade cupcake toppers with images from the book cut into circles and glued onto toothpicks.

It was a very relaxed party, with most of the details tended to ahead of time and a simple menu. I was so thankful to be able to enjoy the party and our friends myself! Most importantly, the birthday boy had fun!

I purchased this Wild One onesie from Etsy and made a ribbon bunting by tying ribbons around a piece of cord. I used some spare burlap to add a number 1 to the center and taped it to his high chair tray.

Here it is when it was a work in progress - using a cord instead of a ribbon to tie the ribbons onto gave me much nicer knots!

For party favors, I got the idea to use bubbles with a label “a trick to tame the wild things.” Somewhere I got the idea to spray paint them gold (Pinterest?) and I’m not certain why I decided that was a necessary idea, but I ran with it anyways.

I removed the caps but kept on the travel seal, flipping the bubble bottles upside down. Using gold metallic spray paint, I sprayed the bubbles with my (reluctant) helper. Once the bottles were dry, I added a label using regular printer paper and tape.

This is what guests saw when they entered and exited - I borrowed the bark vase from a friend and included a photo from our Wild Things photo shoot. The framed quote says, “make mischief of one kind or another.”

Hope you enjoyed reading about this Wild One party! Happy party planning!