Zebra Birthday: Four Ideas to Celebrate
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Four ideas to celebrate your son or daughter with a zebra birthday, from the moment they wake up all the way through the zebra cake. Make it a special day.
I can hardly believe our second child, our sweet little baby boy, turned a year old recently. I swear time has gone by exponentially faster this past year than it did when our first child was a baby, if that’s possible. The theme for our little dude’s big day was a zebra birthday. Here’s how we celebrated.
IDEA 1: CELEBRATE THE BIRTHDAY BOY’S GROWTH THIS PAST YEAR
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The idea for a zebra birthday for our son’s first birthday started a year earlier. When he was born, we got him the most adorable stuffed zebra. Then each month thereafter, we took a photo of him with the stuffed zebra on the glider chair in his nursery.
Doing so gave us a great way to visually see how much he had grown from month to month, from this tiny baby who hardly moved to a big boy who we could hardly keep in the chair! To celebrate his growth, we printed all the monthly photos of him as 5 x 7s and displayed them on his birthday by attaching them to a long thin ribbon using small blue clothespins.
IDEA 2: DECORATE THE BEDROOM DOOR FOR THE ZEBRA BIRTHDAY
When our little dude opened his big blue eyes on the morning of his birthday, he was so delighted to find that we’d decorated his door with streamers, balloons, a banner and large number “1”s. I found free printable zebra striped numbers on Tales of a Teacherista and was able to enlarge the number one and print several copies to hang on his bedroom door. Almost as great as our one-year-old’s reaction was the look on his three-year-old big brother’s face when he saw the door — big brother clearly knew that this was little brother’s BIG day.
IDEA 3: BAKE A CAKE FOR A ZEBRA BIRTHDAY
My mother found an actual cake mix that made the cake itself look like it had zebra stripes by layering chocolate and white batter to get the zebra effect. (See our instructions to make a zebra striped cake). I covered it with white frosting and then trimmed it with blue “Happy Birthday” letters and green around the edges of the cake. I used a store bought classic white frosting, but next time I think I’ll make my own so that it’s stiffer for decorating with cake decorating tools. This frosting seemed a little too soft so I just pretended the green trim was grass from the Sahara desert where a zebra would roam. I used a small zebra figurine and a number one candle to top it off for our birthday boy.
IDEA 4: HOST A ZEBRA BIRTHDAY PARTY
The evening of his birthday we hosted a small family party at our house with pizza (one of his favorites!) and gifts followed by the zebra cake. Finding party supplies for a little boy’s zebra birthday proved to be more challenging than I expected. I looked at stores for months. It seems you can find zebra print with hot pink accents in all the party stores, but you have to look much harder to find zebra print for boys.
Fortunately, a little internet search led me to the perfect party supplies. Not only were they blue and zebra, they were actually for a first birthday too. We just got small dessert plates, large napkins and a matching foil balloon which I was able to get filled at a local dollar store (what they won’t do for a $1!)
All-in-all it was a wonderful day, celebrating our special little dude. Though he won’t remember his first birthday, he will have pictures to look back and see how special and loved he is.
What’s Next?
While you’re here, be sure to check out other birthday ideas on Ideas for the Home by Kenarry® –
How cute and very well done! I love the idea of using the monthly baby photos as a center piece to tie the 1st birthday together. It’s amazing what a little creativity and internet searching can pull off. Love it!
Thanks! We sure had a fun time celebrating our little guy. Glad you liked the idea for the monthly baby photos and how we tied that into our theme. I figure this is one of the only years when *I* get to choose the theme. By the time he’s two I’m sure he’ll have some favorite animal, character or something I’ll need to build the party around!