Drive by party planners over here! It happened guys- my twins turned ONE! It’s been a whole week of having one year olds! I am still holding back tears as I write that my babies are toddlers now.
I had a huge party envisioned with all of our friends and family and would be lying if I said I did not grieve not being able to host it.
BUT! I decided not to let the boxes of decorations and goodies in my garage sit there. I made the best of the situation we are in and planned an extremely fun and totally decorated 1st Birthday Drive By Party.
The theme for this party was always to be: Suns Out Guns Out. A party full of beach and pool style decor from suns, surfboards, sunglasses, water activities, and sand toys.
Invitation
The invitation was a FaceBook group and downloadable invite on Etsy.
The Facebook invite gave me a good idea of how many kids and adults to expect so I could have enough goodies for everyone.
You can find a big selection of drive by party printable invitations on Etsy. I made sure to include that it was a drive by party and the streets where everyone would line up and the time.
I know some will opt for a window time frame and sit outside to great guests. However, the kids love the parade style and waving to everyone and seeing everyone together. We love more of a meet here at this time kind of thing.
Goodies
I still created goodie bags a few days before so that they could sit there untouched before the party (safety first guys!). Each bag was filled with a mini sand toy set, sunglasses, a beach ball, and bubbles.
I created some fun stickers to personalize it and used brown paper bags to store everything inside of them.
Now we have a lot of friends and family without little ones and wanted to do something fun for them too. I ordered 6 dozen delicious cookies from a local small business, Baked by Angel. Two cookies were placed in a small bag with a sticker.
Everyone is still raving about these cookies. Angel was recommended by a friend and did not disappoint. A huge plus is she packages each cookie individually with an easy tear bag and places a sticker with her ingredients on each cookie!
It would not be a social distance event without a mention of Toilet Paper- the staple of the pandemic! My mother in law gave me the idea of packaging up a toiler paper roll for our guests.
You can find my tutorial for the Toilet Paper Party Favor HERE.
I created some super fun and cute tag with my Cricut and added a “Thank You for ROLLING on by” to them! Everyone loved this idea and talk about useful!
These tags were super easy to make, click here for the easy tutorial.
Decorations
For decorations I wanted to keep it simple. The day of their actual birthday we had our own celebration where I decorated the inside of our home- you can find that info here. I reused some of our hanging decorations for the outside of our home.
I started by renting a Happy Birthday lawn sign from a local small business. If you are in the Southern California Inland Empire area I highly recommend Happy Signs RC. She was so great to communicate with and setup so quickly!
Our guests thought that huge lawn sign was super cool and we will definitely hire her for Lia’s birthday in 2 months (she is all for these birthday parades).
I hung our 2 tissue suns on our front porch and added some tissue pom poms to our EZ Up. We brought out a table and setup all our goodies with a ONE balloon in the center and were done!
I will say I am a huge fan of the easy cleanup and setup of these Drive-By parades!
The Parade
We had our friends and family line up around the corner and start making their way up our street. The kids had their water table setup under our canopy so they could see everyone come by.
To safely pass out the goodies we had I put a mask on and brought out our hand sanitizer as well. The process went a little like: sanitize, hand goodies, take signs & any gifts or cards, bring back to our driveway, sanitize, & repeat.
My husband stayed back and cared for the kids while I ran back and forth to keep the movement as low as possible.
*I did make note to everyone that to exchange and receive things a mask would be mandatory for everyone’s safety.*
It was a beautiful day where we got to see all of our loved ones. The boys stood in awe at the cars honking, waving, screaming Happy Birthday and all the signs and balloons from everyones cars!
For some friends and family they got out of their cars and we took social distance photos. (We stood 6 ft apart).
I definitely miss being able to hug everyone, but for those 45minutes of seeing everyone’s faces my heart was bursting with joy.
I can’t wait until the day we get to all safely celebrate life, but until then we will do what we can and enjoy every single moment.
