If you’ve been following along, you know that our friend Rita was planning a robot-themed party for her son’s first birthday. Jo already told you about the robot invitations and robot centerpieces she helped Rita with, and now that the party is over, I’m happy to be able to tell you how it went. We’ve even got a couple more party ideas to share with you.

First, let me show you how well the tables came out. Rita put one of the robot centerpieces on each table, along with an assortment of markers and some colorful balloons tied to little robot figures. She also scattered some giant die-cut robot figures on the tables for the kids to color with the markers. She made them using Jo’s Cricut and the Robotz Cricut cartridge, and made each robot as big as she could get it on a 12″ piece of cardstock.

She also put robot party favor boxes on the tables, which coordinated perfectly with the adorable robot tableware she had for the food. Each favor box was labeled with a child’s name and filled with toys. They were so awesome that I looked really hard for one with my name on it, but I couldn’t find one anywhere!

For dessert, Rita used our robot-themed designs over at CupcakeCollars.com to create adorable cupcakes for all the guests. Because table space was at a premium, she left some of the cupcakes with no collar and displayed them on a simple stand that Jo came up with on the fly — it’s just two foil cake circles with a plastic cup hot-glued between them. It took 30 seconds to make and it worked fantastically.

Since it was going to be a hot afternoon, Rita was going to have lots of drinks on hand. The night before the party, Jo called me and said, “Can you make some robot labels for the water bottles?” and of course I had to oblige, if only for the sheer sake of the cuteness that was sure to come from them. I made it in a downloadable PDF so that you could all use it, too!

Download our Robot Water Bottle Labels

NOTE – All water bottles are a little different, and have different sizes of labels, so these aren’t going to fit every bottle you might find. These labels are perfectly sized to cover a 1/2 liter bottle of Nestle PureLife water, which is a very common brand around here. You might be able to use them for other brands, too, if you remove the original label first.

Applying the labels was about as easy as you can imagine. We just printed them onto sticker paper, cut them into strips, and stuck them right over the existing labels.

The process was so quick and easy and the results so cute that we definitely plan to use this idea for more of our parties in the future.

We did learn a lesson, though, almost immediately after finishing the labels. The printed labels get pretty much ruined as soon as you put them in ice to cool them! Grrr, it was so frustrating. We ended up propping the bottles up so that only the bottoms were under ice, and that worked very well.

We also came up with an idea for how to avoid this problem next time. By simply covering the label with a strip of wide packing tape, we make it resistant to the water and ice! And as a bonus, because the tape is sticky and holds the label on, the labels can be printed onto regular paper instead of sticker paper. I tried it just now and it worked great. I even ran the bottle under the tap for a few seconds and the label didn’t get damaged at all.

All in all, it was a great party, and the robot theme carried through very well. We really enjoyed helping our friend with the planning!

By the way… did I mention how much the birthday boy loved his cake?