Anatomy of a First Birthday: The Favors

So, like I said in the last post, I decided to put pirate stickers, chocolate coins, a child-sized eye patch, and a stuffed parrot in each brown paper lunch sack. It took forever to find a parrot pattern, but here's the one I used--it's FANTASTIC.

http://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/stuffed_parrot

I altered my pattern a bit, to make it more baby-friendly: I cut all of my pieces out of felt (no feathers) and omitted the feet/safety pin (although the parrots ARE the perfect size, they would be so cute pinned to little kids' shoulders, if that were safe :p ). I also didn't have time to make a "beak sock" and white mask around the eyes for each parrot, so I just hole punched pieces of black felt and glued them on my parrots. I didn't do feather stitch detailing on each bird, but I still think they turned out nice. If I'd had time, I may have done the stitch detailing.

We have 8 little guests coming, so I made 9 parrots, because I want Ezra to have one as a memento from his first birthday :) I picked the color combinations to make each parrot unique, because I'm planning on having each child or parent pick their own parrot. Four of the kids are girls, so I made 2 overtly girly parrots (pink and purple) and one in the more subdued feminine hues of dark purple and pink, so there's enough girliness without planning on each girl being in love with pink. I Googled a few macaws at the beginning to get me going on color schemes, so a few of these guys are pretty realistically colored, and I like that. :)

Next, eye patches. I cut a general shape/size out of black felt and held it up to Ezra's face to gauge the appropriateness. I ended up trimming a lot, and ended up with with a patch about 1 7/8" across and 1 1/2" top to bottom, with bottom corners rounded. I cut some yarn and measured Ezra's head, leaving enough slack to be able to tie it in a bow around his head (if he cooperates. I'm not expecting any of the patches to be worn, but they look cute and it's fun to picture.) I cut about 34" of yarn for the smaller kids, and 36" for the older kids. I straight stitched it (by hand, the machine wouldn't handle this very well, I don't think) to the top edge of the patch. Viola!

Then I typed each child's name into a Word document in Blackadder size 72 and drew each name onto a bag. Here's what the favor bags look like:

I filled each bag with the patch and the stickers, lined them up in the chest, and hung the parrots along the front of the chest, like so:

Keeping it secret:

Chocolate coins are chilling in the fridge. We'll put them in the cooler with the chilled water bottles so they don't melt in the heat (did I mention that this has been the hottest week of the summer??), and guests who want them can add them to their bags on the way out.

The only tricky thing I haven't quite figured out is when to give the guests their bags. I don't want any kids demanding to take their parrots into the pool...hmmm. I'll keep you all updated.

Bottom line:

Parrots:

3 colors of felt, using just under 2 sheets for each parrot (you can use the same colors for multiple parrots): $0.50

Stuffing: You can get a small bag for about $3 and probably won't use it all

Eye patches:

1 sheet of black felt, $0.25 for all 9

Yarn: $2.79 a skein, but you'll have a ton left over for other projects (I already had this in my materials)

Stickers:

From Target, $4 a package/4 sheets a package (by far my biggest splurge)

Lunch sacks:

About $0.02 each

Chocolate coins:

$0.99 for a bag of 7 (I bought 5 bags, so each guest is getting 4, with three left for us)=$4.95

Total per bag: About $2.61