Brunch with the Brother Bears | Brown Bear Themed First Birthday Party

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We’ve called Hayes and Shep our “brother bears” from the very beginning and since Brown Bear, Brown Bear is one of our favorite books to read, I knew from the time they were tiny I wanted a bear-themed first birthday party with the Eric Carle bear. A big brunch for our sweet twin boys, with friends and family who came from all over to celebrate with us made for a pretty unbeatable morning!

I’ve had lots of moms reach out asking where I got these invitations – I made them myself (along with the poster, food labels and ONE banner below) and I’m happy to edit/share the file(s) if you’re wanting to do this party theme too – email me here to inquire.

Here’s a roundup of what we served - scroll for details and recipes below.

FOOD
Waffle + pancake bar with toppings
Chicken + waffles with Chick Fil A nuggets
Fruit salad
Sausage balls
Teddy trail mix
Custom cookies
Birthday cake + smash cakes

DRINKS
Beary Sweet Lemonade in honey bear cups for the kids
Mama Bear Mimosas + juice bar
Bear’s Bubbly - apple cinnamon champagne cocktail
Honey Bear - bourbon citrus sage cocktail

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Brown Bear Birthday Party Ideas

I wanted a fun drink for the kids served in honey bear cups and found a few recipes for honey-sweetened strawberry lemonade that I combined into this one. I’d never made simple syrup before but it really was simple! You can make it a few hours ahead of time or the day before and let it chill in the fridge.

Beary Sweet Lemonade - makes 16 honey bear cups
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup honey
1 tablespoon brown sugar
4-5 sliced strawberries
Simply Lemonade

Bring the water, honey, sugar and strawberries to a boil, turn down and let simmer for a few minutes until berries soften, then strain the berries and let the syrup cool in a mason jar. The morning of the party I poured the syrup into all the honey bears (just eyeballed it), filled up the rest of the cups with Simply Lemonade and popped in a kraft paper straw. So yummy and they were a big hit with the kids!

Having a book for guests to sign is a cute way to incorporate a keepsake at baby showers or birthday parties. It’s so fun to read back with your kiddos later and remember who came to celebrate!

I wanted a welcome poster to carry the theme through the main table area. Office Depot will print posters (1-2 day turnaround if you pick up in store) for about $15, depending on size. I had all of our food labels, banner letters and signage printed on cardstock at Office Depot too and picked them up with the poster. So handy!

Morgan of Cowtown Cookie Co. in Fort Worth made the cookies for Steele’s first birthday and I knew I wanted her cookies for the boys’ first birthday, too. I told her the theme and the font I’d used on the invites and she went to work. She is just so talented!

Teddy Trail Mix Recipe

-Pretzel snaps
-Honeycomb cereal
-Teddy Grahams
-Mini marshmallows
-Butterscotch chips
Combine in amounts to your liking and mix well.

The waffle + pancake bar was such a fun way to serve brunch to a house full of people. We had about 35 guests, and I was worried about getting enough waffles toasted in time/keeping them warm, but we borrowed a second toaster from a friend, toasted 4 at a time that morning and kept them warm in the oven until right before serving time. For the pancakes, we just did oven-bake mini pancakes. We had 2 boxes of 24 buttermilk waffles + 1 big box of mini pancakes and had more than enough to go around. It all turned out great!

Waffle Bar Topping Ideas

  • chopped fruit (bananas, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries)

  • cinnamon

  • peanut butter

  • chocolate syrup

  • caramel syrup

  • regular syrup + butter

  • Nutella

  • Reddi Whip

  • ricotta or whipped cream cheese

  • mini chocolate chips

  • butterscotch chips

  • mini marshmallows

  • sprinkles

  • bacon crumbles

We also had a big fruit salad and sausage balls, along with “chicken and waffles” - mini waffles and Chick Fil A nuggets on a toothpick - these were gone in about 5 minutes! I probably should’ve gotten the medium size nugget tray instead of small (120 vs 64), and you could really do 1 mini waffle per nugget instead of 2. Lots of guests put nuggets on their big waffles too, so you could even forego the mini waffles and just have the nuggets as a topping option for your waffle bar.

When I was searching for bear-themed beverages, I came across this bourbon drink called the Honey Bear - it’s sweetened with oranges and a honey/sage leaf simple syrup. I tweaked/simplified a few different recipes to come up with our own version and it was DIVINE.

Honey Bear Citrus Sage Simple Syrup

makes enough for 16-20 servings
-1 cup water
-1 cup honey
-1 tablespoon brown sugar
-half an orange, squeezed
-10-12 sage leaves

Combine all ingredients, bring to a boil, turn down and let simmer for a few minutes until honey and sugar are dissolved. Strain and store liquid in a mason jar to cool.

These you can’t really make ahead of time, so I put the syrup in a honey bear cup, wrote the recipe out on a card and let people make their own.

Honey Bear Bourbon Cocktail Recipe

2 oz bourbon over ice
1 oz simple syrup
Stir well, add orange peel and sage leaf for garnish.

Bear’s Bubbly has been a favorite of ours since we had it at our friends’ wedding - it was their signature cocktail named after their dog, Bear, and lemme tell you, you’re gonna want to be drinking this all fall and winter long. The amounts/ratios of the recipe are really up to you (we made a big batch in a pitcher for the party), but it’s pretty hard to mess up - any way you do it, it’s freaking delicious.

Bear’s Bubbly recipe | Champagne-Fireball-Cider Cocktail for fall

-large bottle of Fireball
-bottle of champagne
-jug of apple cider
Mix all in equal parts - add more cider if it’s too strong. Garnish with a rosemary sprig.

I wanted plenty of drink options, so we also had a “Mama Bear Mimosa” bar with Simply Strawberry, Simply Blueberry, Simply Peach, champagne and mint leaves for everyone to make their own mimosas or to just grab some juice!

My sweet Hayes and Shep digging into their smash cakes - they were obsessed! I went the easy route for these and bought ready-made cake slices for $2.98 from the cold section of the store bakery. Cut into a circle shape, cover with more white icing and voila!

The banner and the high chair garlands were both DIYs using this TISSUE PAPER TASSEL TUTORIAL which could not have been easier. You only need one sheet of tissue paper to make each tassel, so 3-4 colors, 1 pack each, was more than enough for this banner and the 2 high chair garlands.

We feasted and cheers’d and celebrated a huge milestone with our baby boys and my heart was so happy all day long. Happy first birthday, sweet brother bears!