For my daughter Mini Me’s first birthday party this summer, Little Jo and I decided to go with a cupcake theme. It was the sweetest party and I can’t wait to tell you all about it!

First things first when it comes to parties — I needed an invitation. I checked Shutterfly to see what they had in the way of photo invitations, and was thrilled to find this one that had a first birthday cupcake on it to match my theme. It also had the cute feature of including 12 pictures of my kid, one from each month of her life. Sold!

Once the invitations were in the mail, it was time to focus on some decorations.  I used my Cricut machine and the Sweet Treats cartridge to cut out some vinyl and paper decorations to hang on the wall.  The vinyl was great because it stuck to the wall on its own and was easy to remove. To attach the paper decorations to the wall, I turned to my favorite go-to party item, Command adhesive poster strips.

If you don’t have a Cricut machine, I found some really cute vinyl cupcake wall clings online that you could use instead. They also just so happen to match the adorable cupcake-themed 1st birthday party ware that I used for the party (more on that later).

Little Jo and I thought the birthday girl deserved her own special cake, and we found several neat pans (like this, this, and this) that you can use to make giant cupcake cakes.

We decided to use the big 3-D cupcake pan to make a Mini Me her own giant cupcake. I frosted it with big swirls of frosting and added lots of edible glitter to really make it shine.

The birthday girl’s cake was taken care of, but all the guests still needed some cake to eat. Since this was a cupcake-themed party, I knew I wanted to set up a table for cupcake decorating. I made cupcakes in all sizes and flavors for the guests and had bags of swirled icing ready to use.

I put out lots of different cupcake sprinkles and other toppings for everyone, and it was such a delightful display. The possibilities are endless when it comes to cupcake decorations!

Choosing the party ware for the party was really easy when I spotted this line of adorable 1st birthday party cupcake plates and napkins.

I wish I had seen the matching pinata and T-shirt before my party but alas, I did not.  I wanted to include them so that you might benefit from my extensive cupcake party research.

Just so you know, they make a similar line of cupcake party ware for little boys, too! (They also have a similar design for a girls 2nd birthday)

I’m definitely going to order this acrylic cupcake album to use to scrapbook the party so that I never forget it. I love acrylic albums!  I might also get the chipboard one as well and combine the two into an interesting dual album.  I will let you know about that that when I get it done. You know, sometime before her second birthday, if I am lucky!

For party favors, I ended up using pink polka-dot treat bags, but if I had been on top of my game, I would have used one of these cute fabrics to make some of Chica’s drawstrings pouches to use as favor bags.

The party was lots of fun and the birthday girl had a blast!  Doesn’t she look cute in the cupcake bib that Chica made her to match her party theme?