Baby first birthday!

[hearts1989g]

My baby is turning one very soon.
we live away from family and have a good community where we live.
i would like to do something for her birthday but our house is a construction site so home is not an option.
we would like to invite family and friends…
any ideas on what to do?
I feel a bit young for a soft play scenario and she’s so young this is more for parents really isn’t it?
or should I scrap the idea altogether.
we live by both a park and beach so they could be an option but weather dependant,,,

What about a pub lunch. One with a play area if there are older children coming.
FWIW we never did home parties. Shudder at the thought.

That’s a great idea I’ll look into ones in my area!

Our local community centre is like £99 for 2 hours and includes soft play, bouncy castles and other games etc.

We felt first birthday was very much a celebration of us surviving the first year we hired a small hall, served cake, nibbles and wine and stuff for the babies to eat and invited friends and family plus NCT babies and we got one of those people who bring a selection of animals to pet to do a session. The babies seemed to like it particularly the pig and it made for some gorgeous pics and to be honest the adults absolutely loved it too. All the babies were 1st babies as from our NCT group which probably made it easier as no big kids which can be tricky mixing with just turning 1 years olds and it meant the babies got to really enjoy it without bigger ones taking over. We got our son a little sand table for his birthday and before putting sand in it we took it to the party with the sand toys so all brand new and clean and put Rice Krispies in it, that went down really well. We took a few other of his favourite toys to sit around too. Really glad we did it as we all had fun.

If your house is already chaos, I would make the day as easy as possible rather than trying to force a big hosted party.

A park picnic, cafe lunch, village hall, or even just meeting people somewhere baby-friendly is absolutely enough at one. They will not remember a perfect setup, but you will remember whether the day felt manageable.

If you want one thing to make it feel special, I would do something tiny and keepable rather than more stuff: one favourite photo from the day, everyone writing a line in a card or notebook, and maybe put away one small outfit or birthday card with the date on it. That tends to become more meaningful later than a huge production.