You Are My Sunshine 1st Birthday Party

 

Happy April, friends! March pretty much tried to kill me with various ailments (tonsillitis, food poisoning, allergies, aches and pains), so I'm happy to be moving on to a fresh month. And look what I finally have to show you! I had way, way too much fun planning this party. I'm excited to share some of the pictures with you.

 

I told my husband I wanted the frosting to look like clouds, and well, my husband is awesome. He definitely delivered.

Tissue Paper Tassel Garland

Suns from the "Create a Critter" Cricut cartridge

Banner from the "Something to Celebrate" Cricut cartridge

Party Hat Template

Now I'll give a little run-down of the party. We sang "Happy Birthday" and let Elle have at her smash cake, of course. I loved how she daintily picked off slices of mango before tasting the icing. She is definitely my girl. She needed a little assistance to actually break into the cake.

 

We kept our guest list small to cut down on the cost for food and party supplies, so we had mostly family and a few close friends in attendance. The result was an intimate gathering of people who have been in Elle's life since she was just a few days old. Since the birthday girl couldn't quite make a wish of her own, I asked everyone to record a birthday wish for her in a journal. I hope to make a tradition of filling this book with birthday wishes each year. 

Another fun thing we did was ask the guests to bring an object to represent an occupation Elle might choose in the future. We got this idea from some friends in our old ward. Apparently it's a Bulgarian tradition to sit your one year old in the middle of a circle of objects and predict their future based on what they choose. Sounded fun to me!

Based on the objects, her choices were veterinarian, paleontologist, dentist, engineer, starlet, teacher, chef, artist, or ophthalmologist. The outcome was clear: she went straight for the calculator (representative of engineering). We did the test a second time to see what her second choice would be, and she went for the protractor (Dad had sneaked in two objects for engineering). Only time will tell if the test is right...

The next day I realized that I'd forgotten to put the party hat on Elle even once during the party, so naturally I had to remedy that ASAP. I put her in the brand new dress she received for her birthday, fed her cake, which worked out perfectly because we had A LOT of leftover cake to eat up, and played with the confetti. I'm pretty sure it was one of the most exciting weekends of her life. ;)

If anyone's interested, I created a Pinterest board to keep track of many of my online supply purchases and recipes (without a visual of what I'd purchased, my head would start spinning). I did what I consider to be extensive comparison shopping when it came to things like striped paper straws, baking cups, etc. and I found The TomKat Studio to have the best prices. My order also arrived super quick! Can't beat that.