My fourth and final son just turned 1. He loves balloons so we decided to just fill the room with balloons.

Supplies

Lots and lots and lots of balloons! We had probably about 3-400. A helium tank for some variety and a few hand pumps are nice to have. Oh! and some friends to help. You will most certainly want some help.

We put tickets in the balloons to be collected at the end of the party to spend on prizes for all the bigger kids who came. Some balloons only had 1 ticket, some had 2 or 3, and some had 10 or 15. This way, when the party is ending, all the kids go on a popping spree to collect the tickets and the balloon pieces, which saves me the trouble of clean up of a few hundred balloons. If you do this, you will need a prize table labeled with prices. We also put 3 special tickets in the balloons which would allow the winner to choose a large prize.

Step 1: Blow Baby Blow

It took us about a day and a half to blow up all the balloons. We had about 4 adults and 4-5 kids helping off and on.

Then we used a baby gate to block off an area and gathered all the balloons in to make a decently deep balloon pit of fun!

We used all the light up balloons with balloon glue dots I found at the dollar tree to line the hallway.

All the kids of all ages from little Orik (the bday boy) all the way up to 14 year old brother enjoyed the pit. It was a mad house when it came to all the popping but they all LOVED that part. We had to give the little ones toothpicks to help them pop balloons because they didn't weigh enough to pop them. I underestimated the number of tickets each kid would get and my prizes were very underpriced so my prize table got cleared out almost completely.

It was a lot of work to put this simple party together but it was worth it. Made for a memorable 1st birthday.