Here we go with this totally awesome Book Themed First Birthday Party by mommy Rory Castanon for her son Cayson’s first birthday! Inspired by the kid classic “Everything Goes on Land”, Rory transformed her garage into a super creative DIY city complete with storefronts, roads, street signs & toy cars for the little tykes! And one of the details you wont want to miss are the absolutely CREATIVE store awnings crafted from poster borders!

PARTY HIGHLIGHTS to look out for:

• Garage “City” with stores, roads, traffic signs and a mini train!
• DIY storefronts: painted cardboard buildings, cellophane windows & poster board “border paper” awnings
• Book page party hats & triangle bunting + book inspired bird silhouettes

PARTY DETAILS, as told by Rory…

For Cayson’s first birthday, I wanted to throw a fun party with bright colors and a car theme. My 2 year old son LOVES cars so obviously his little brother does too. We had recently bought the book “Everything Goes on Land” by Brian Biggs so I figured why not make Cayson’s first birthday party an Everything Goes theme.

Since the party was at our house and we don’t have a huge backyard, I knew I needed to transform our playroom / garage into a little city so the kids could have plenty of room to play. Since I can’t draw, I used cardboard to make my vision come to life. I painted jumbo size cardboard boxes in bright colors, made awnings using the school teacher borders, cut out windows and covered them with cellophane to give it a window appearance.  I used my Cricut to cut out all the store words and window decorations. For the telephone poles, I used duct tape and cardboard. I did the same for the street light.  The birds I put up were birds from the book. My mom came up with the idea to make a fire lane around the baseboard and I did that with duct tape too.

I worked with Jennifer from Gilmore Studios to create the invitations and loved how they turned out. I always like to get the cake smash pictures before the 1^st birthday party so I can use it for the invitation. Plus, that way I know that I get the perfect cake smash picture.

The centerpieces on the tables were cars, mini wood road signs and photos of the birthday boy. For the dessert table, I used the leftover book covers as part of the display, hung up a banner I made with my Cricut, and had cars driving up and down the table.

The party hats were made from left over pages from the book. On the solid party hats, I made paper pinwheels from the left over pages and added some road sign graphics from the book.

We also rented a cute train for the party to take the kids on the “tour of the big city.”

The party favors were a book by the author, coloring pages, and a car. I made little paper pinwheels to put on each of the bags to keep with the Everything Goes Theme.

The boys shirts, birthday hat and bib were made by no one other than Rachel Golden of *golden* .