We were blessed with a beautiful day for his party. A little warm, but it's hard to complain about warm weather when the sun is shining and there's no rain in sight.
The planning for this big day started months ago when I stumbled upon Pottery Barn Kid's idea to make the invitations in mason jars on a "leaf" cut-out and a handmade caterpillar out of pom-poms.
And from there it spiraled into everything caterpillar!
The goody bags and caterpillar cut-outs came from the Dollar Tree down the street. The bags were sold in sets of two and I got about 50 caterpillar cut-outs for $1!!! I made the butterfly clothespin snack bags from a pin on Pinterest. I simply hot glue gunned some pom-poms, stuck on eyes, and glued on pipecleaners. Then I used a snack bag ziplock loaded with Annie's bunnies and puffs for one of the bags and snapped the clothespin in the middle. Easy and a big hit!
The decor took the most time since I made every poster by hand.
The banner was made out of a roll of burlap from Michael's and then I used my handy-dandy hot glue gun again to glue on the circles I cut out of card stock to write the letters. I hung it above the gift and goody bag table.
Streamers and balloons were a must! I used some more of the circles and cut-out caterpillars that I had left to hide the blue painter's tape from where they were attached to the wall.
These took a while, but I made two suns with kid paint and then allowed Evan to make handprints around them to finish off the suns. For the middle poster, I bought bulletin board trip and cut them in strips to fit a poster board. I glued them on with a glue stick, cut out the number one out of poster board, and glued that on to finish it off. And there's my backdrop for the food table.
We had to have a caterpillar with all of his pictures from each month. This was another easy thing to make as I used a large bowl to help cut out the circles for the caterpillar.
To welcome people into the house, I made a strawberry out of poster board, found a caterpillar image from the internet and printed that off to attach with some balloons. It beat hanging the balloons on our mailbox.
I saw the idea to use the book as a guest book for everyone to sign somewhere on the internet and fell in love with the idea. How fun will that be in 17 years to look back in his book to see all the wishes for his first birthday? Well...I'll enjoy it at least.
None of my birthday parties for the boys would be complete without a slideshow made on Windows Movie Maker software with all their pictures from the past year. I narrowed it down to about 17 minutes worth of pictures and songs. That's pretty impressive for me...
My favorite part! His cakes. Yes, that's plural. The smaller one at the bottom is obviously his smash cake. It was huge, but he had so much fun digging his fingers into it. The larger one was unbelievable! The detail on the fondant and the freshness of the buttercream frosting and marble cake batter was out of this world. Monica's Cakes. That's who created these masterpieces! Bravo!
My one true splurge for this party and something I didn't feel up for making, as fabric and sewing is not my forte, was this highchair banner. I bought it on Etsy and I loved, loved, loved it! I think it totally helped make his cake smash pictures!
Speaking of food, I made some centerpieces for the tables out of buckets I found for $2 each at Michael's. I used images from online, some cardstock behind them to add a pop of color, cake pop sticks, floral foam pieces to stick them in, and then some of that paper grass. Very easy and turned out cute! I only put four food tents on the table with quotes from the book. I tried to do some of the food items like green leaves (salad), watermelon, and other fruit, but for the most part I kept it to simple BBQ fare.
Last but not least, his shirt. I ordered his shirt off Etsy and it couldn't have turned out any better! The red looked great on him and it's big enough that he can wear it through early fall while the weather is still mild.
Happy birthday, Evan! This year went by too fast, but we love the little person you've become!
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