Puppy Pawty! First Birthday Party Idea

This puppy birthday party is such a fun theme for little ones who love furry friends. The affordable party decorations are made almost completely from dollar store scrapbook paper!

When my youngest turned one, there was one thing we were sure about. It needed to be a puppy birthday party… or a puppy pawty ;) He loved pretty much any pet and got so so excited for dogs. The other thing we were pretty set on? Simple. We had moved that summer and were just finishing up our kitchen renovation, partway through flooring our whole home when we hosted this party so simple was truly the name of the game for us.

All of the decorations were made with paper (and a few balloons!) from the dollar store. That made decorations so affordable for this party. The treats are mostly puppy themed as well with a few chips and treats. We always try put out a big plate of veggies on the counter as well for birthday parties… but it just didn’t look as cute on the table for the photos ;)

For the backdrop of the party table, I used one dollar store black poster board and a few sheets of dollar store black and brown cardstock. I love using dollar store poster board for parties- you can see I used black poster board for the backdrop of this party as well. I cut the banner and large sign out with scissors, using white paint marker to write ‘puppy paw-ty’ and all of C’s information.

I love doing this for my kids’ first birthdays. It’s so nice to be able to remember all the stats. You can see I forgot to finish the stats before I photographed the party, but they’re finished in some of the other photos- ha! I think Shane must have been measuring him while I was finishing up the decor.

C was on the MOVE that day (and always), it was hard to get a good photo of him with his sign… but it wasn’t for lack of trying!

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I cut out the paw prints using my Cricut, but you could also cut them out with paper and a stencil. I really love using my Cricut for party prep – it saves so much time! All the paper was put up on the wall using double sided tape from the dollar store.

I also had a number balloon and a few white balloons blown up at the dollar store and turned one into a puppy. This is easy to do with some paper, double sided tape and a sharpie. It’s cute that it’s him who loved puppies so much actually, when we told the kids we were pregnant with him, we asked if they were hoping for a boy or a girl and my then youngest hoped it was a puppy. We made the announcement with balloons- including a puppy balloon just like this!

Instead of party grab bags, we opted to get those tiny TY puppies for each of the kids attending the puppy birthday party. We added a ‘free to a good home’ sign and honestly I love giving something that’s not candy to kids (the older my kids get, the more insistent they are for candy though).

For treats, we made his smash cake really small and added some puppies walking all over it. Since I don’t have a tiny cake stand, I used a regular cake with a small dish turned upside down to look like a cake stand. I’ve done this quite a few times and it always works so well. If you were wanting to be able to cut the cake on the stand without a wobble, you can actually hot glue them together and they’ll pop right off after the fact.

We made the rest of the cake into cupcakes with puppy faces. These eyes/ears/noses are all sprinkles, also from the dollar store! My mom also made some bone shaped gingerbread cookies for us with ‘woof’ and ‘ruff’ written on them. They turned out so cute! We have this giant box of cookie cutters that my mom gave us ages ago. It has a bone in it (along with cutters for pretty much every occasion!) so we used that.

This puppy birthday party was so simple to pull together and really affordable to decorate. I love how modern and minimal the party decorations are with the black and brown paper on the white walls- so simple, but totally kid-friendly with the puppy theme… a total paw-ty ;)

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