Planning a first birthday party is filled with so many mixed emotions ranging from pure joy to disbelief and awe. It’s a wonderful experience to watch your baby turn one, but also how did it happen so fast!? Where does the first year go!? As I was watching my little guy grow before my eyes I stumbled upon the cutest Captain Adorable onesie as I was searching for the next size up of clothes since he was outgrowing everything. Knowing he loved his whale stuffed animal, I decided to throw him a pirate themed first birthday party. Once the theme was set in place the ideas just started flowing with the help of Pinterest, of course!

Pirate and ocean themed food table display.

The food table was filled with ocean inspired treats ranging from a bucket filled with gold to a yellow bell pepper octopus chilling in the water (blue tinted veggie dip). And, of course, I had to add little bags of Pirate’s Booty, a variety of Goldfish, chocolate gold coins and some Swedish Fish to the options. There were red fish made of ice floating in the deep blue punch bowl. I may have been more excited than I should have been to have found mini ice cubes in the shape of cute fish!

Octopus veggie and cheese tray.
Gold chocolate “booty”  //  First cupcake high chair setup  //  Punch bowl display
Birthday boy enjoying his balloon pool.

The birthday boy had so much fun sitting in the balloon filled kiddie pool the night before his party as we were filling up the pool with more and more balloons. I decided to use a variety of blue balloons in different sizes to fill the pool to give a more playful look.

Lots of fun to be had with the balloon filled pool next to the pirate theme gift table.

I covered one of our smaller living room side tables with a black and white skull tablecloth to use as a gift table before adding a pirate ship balloon behind the table for added height. I may have searched a bit too long to find pirate gift bags, but I was excited to see the gift table come together! I ordered a custom pirate book from Hallmark as a memento of the day and I found a Fisher Price Little People pirate ship that was used for many years.

Pirate themed favor bags.

The little birthday guests got to take home a themed bag containing a pirate headband, eye patch, treasure map with Pirate’s Treasure Crayola crayons. I wasn’t finding a bag I liked so I bought some little craft paper bags, took a black Sharpie with some red polka dot washi tape to create my own map inspired theme goodie bag. 

Happy Party Planning, Friends!

– Maghan