After our busy weekend of partying in Arizona, I returned home and jumped right back in with getting ready for Lucas' second first birthday party at home in Washington. Unfortunately, Lucas and I caught a stomach bug, so Tuesday was spent comforting my sick little buddy and Wednesday and Thursday I was completely out of commission as I spent most of my time either head in the toilet or sleeping next to it on the bathroom floor. I don't think I've ever been so sick! Fortunately, I was feeling a little more myself by Friday, so we had a marathon day of running errands, cleaning and disinfecting the house, prepping food and baking and decorating a cake. I'm not sure how it all got pulled together in one day, but somehow I made it! I'm just thankful I did some of the decorations in the weeks before our trip!
I was pretty proud of my centerpiece, mostly because I thought of it all on my own! (So take note, Land of Pinterest, this is an original!)
I picked up a bunch of tolsby frames at Ikea and freehanded the letters in velum. The truly hard part of the project was picking only ten photos to put in the double sided frames!
Instead of vases, I used our drinking glasses and just added coordinating ribbon. Easy peasy. The bunting I sewed several weeks before the party (thank goodness!) and I plan to hang it in the nursery since it matches the blue of the room. The fabric for the bunting was my starting place since I didn't really have a theme for the party - I decided to just go with a color scheme.
This ribbon wreath was pretty easy to make - I cut and tied ribbon to a foam wreath while watching a bad Jason Statham movie with Dan one Saturday. I plan to do a couple more for Halloween and St. Patrick's Day.
I love hydrangeas! I was hell bent on having hydrangeas at the party. Costco only had this one batch left, but I was happy to take what I could get!
Flowers for the table
I did a birthday message on our new chalk board and added some paper bunting to make it look festive!
Chalk board paint is my new love. I had so much fun making the chalk board for the nook (and a big one in the laundry room) that I was brainstorming all the other surfaces that I could paint it on! I really like how these letters for Lucas' initials turned out. I wrote words on each letter that started with the same letter (L says laughter and love, for example).
I didn't get a proper photo of the food since I was still rushing around getting everything out by the time everyone started arriving. We had sandwiches on croissants, pasta salad, chips, veggies and fruit and raspberry chipotle meatballs.
Present opening was a lot of fun since Lucas seemed to be a little more practiced by this round. He had great helpers, also!
My drooly birthday boy, who was having a rough week with molars.
After presents, we were on to cake!
The proud parents with our birthday boy!
We had forgotten to sing Happy Birthday to Lucas at the AZ party, so he got his serenade around the candle this time around. We leaned in to blow out the candle, and he reached for the flame. As you can tell, I was a little surprised!
The cake was the only thing I was truly disappointed about. Sure, it doesn't look bad, but it's not particularly interesting. I had a great idea planned to do bunting along the sides of the top layer and polk-a-dots on the bottom layer, but I didn't have the time. Heck, I didn't even mix my own colors for this job. Pre-made and colored fondant saved me! I think this was the fastest I've ever pulled a cake together!
Another little trick I pulled out since I was short on time was these cookies. I bought the break and bake chocolate chip cookies and shoved blue and green M&Ms from the Easter mix in them once they were close to finished baking. Voila!
You can kind of see the cupcakes behind me in this one. What you can't see in this photo is the wall of children standing behind me waiting for cake. At one point, I turned to them with my giant knife in my hand and said "you all need to take two BIG steps backward!" You can tell I'm not well seasoned at this kid party thing yet!
Ombre cake layers! Lucas was a little out of his element as the day went on and I didn't think he'd tolerate being stripped down for cake. Since we had already done the big smash in Arizona, I decided we'd just skip it for the party at home. Teething takes the fun out of sugar layers!
The kids all went home with goodie bags filled with items from Target's great Spritz party line - a book, play-dough, crayons, and bubbles. The bags I picked up had pink ribbon for the handles, but I used some of my extra ribbon and rethreaded them to coordinate.
We had a great time with our friends and family and Lucas enjoyed his party so much! I was pooped by the time everyone left, but I was so thrilled that everyone made it to celebrate our boy's big birthday with us!
Later that evening, Lucas and Daddy got to enjoy his gifts and try out some new big boy toys!
That kiddo sure does love his wheels!
March 31, 2012