Our little PARTY ANIMAL became a WILD ONE on August 2nd!! We had a blast celebrating our sweet girl’s first birthday with friends and family!
Some of the most magical memories I have of my childhood are memories of my birthday parties! Heck, celebrating my bday TO THIS DAY is still my favorite! There is truly nothing more joyous than having all your friends together to celebrate and eat some cake!! Since it has always meant so much to me, I always knew I wanted to try to make birthday’s just as magical for my kids one day!
When Scarlett was about 3 months old I thought of this birthday party theme and RAN with it! After all, this will probably be the only birthday where Scar will allow me to pick a theme for her, so I had to come up with something good! Before she inevitably picks a Cocomelon party theme for her 2nd, 3rd and 4th bday party! hahaha
I cannot exactly remember how I came up with the “party animal” theme, but I am so happy I did! Even though I started planning it from the time she was only 3 months, it turns out that she grew to LOVE animals (especially her doggie- Indigo)! That and the fact that she is growing into a WILD little lady made the theme fit perfectly! Kismet!
Unfortunately, looking back, I did not take many pictures of the day. I have some pictures of the decor and very limited pictures of all Scarlett’s family and friends that attended! The whole day went by in a blink of an eye! It’s a wonder I even was able to capture the pictures I was able to! Decorating for a party and setting up food and getting everything together already takes a lot of time and effort, but add in keeping up with an active little one, navigating through her feedings and nap schedule, all the while trying to get myself ready AND get pictures before the party started was, well, IMPOSSIBLE!!
Even if I don’t have a ton of pictures to share, we were so thankful to have so many amazing people come and celebrate our big girl turning 1 with us! We are all incredibly blessed to be surrounded with so much love!
It is VERY hard to see, but pictured sitting on the window ledge are fun party hats that I made for everyone to wear! Wish I would have gotten a better picture of them up close! Oh well! haha But if you look through some of the pictures at the end of this post you will spot some people wearing them though!
Let’s start off discussing my favorite part of any party (aside from games) – the decor!! Of course we had to celebrate with lots of fun, colorful and wild patterns for her big day, so I reached out to Cher at CherCanDoIt and she had the perfect balloons to make all our decor dreams come true! Cher and I linked up on Instagram when I first started my blog and she has been my go-to party gal ever since!! She carries the absolute best, original and fun balloons in her shop and she is one of the kindest people I have ever met! (She also supplied the decor for my baby shower if you want to check that out!)
I didn’t get a chance to snap a picture of it, but for the food we decided to make a taco bar for our guests to enjoy! We had two crockpots full of meat (one beef, one chicken) and a table completely FULL of toppings so that they could create the perfect taco to enjoy!
So many yummy goodies on the dessert table including a smash cake for Scarlett, regular cake (top layer chocolate and bottom layer vanilla) for the rest of the party animals, the cutest cookies from Muench’s Munchies (the most incredible local hand-made cookie shop) and hand-made (by me) coco pebbles and fruity pebbles Rice Krispy treats!
I could not get over these cookies!! Aren’t they gorgeous?! Not only were they beautiful, they were sooooo yummy as well! I made sure to get some cute little lion cookies made special for our little Leo girl ❤
Another hand-made party feature are those teeny little party hats that those wild animals are wearing on the cake! I made them out of just a little bit of scrapbooking paper, pom-poms and pipe cleaners! (DIY video coming to Instagram soon!)
Scarlett had NO idea what to do with her smash cake! Ever since Scar was very small she has always been very detail oriented! Always focusing on the small things! So instead of smashing into the cake and making a mess, she was just interested in examining the sprinkles! haha
As I mentioned earlier, I had planned and planned for Scarlett’s first birthday to be the most magical day for her! I really wanted to instill my love for celebrating birthdays in her and wanted to make everything so special for her big day! But unfortunately you can’t plan for some things… Scarlett did not feel well the day of her party. All she wanted to do was cuddle up and sleep. She had a mild fever the morning of and just generally wasn’t up for a big celebration. No idea if it was a growth spirt? or teething? Not sure what it was, but she did not feel too hot. And it broke my heart into pieces!
The day she was supposed to have SO much fun and celebrate with everyone she didn’t feel well at all and ended up taking a nap right after her cake smash and opening presents. But you know, that’s life! I feel so bad that she didn’t get to feel her bubbly, happy self on her big day, but I know she still had fun and it was so amazing to have so many people come and celebrate with us!
Scarlett is such a loved little lady!! We are forever thankful for our friends and family and how much they love her! Even if she didn’t feel too hot the day of, I know she will look back at these pictures one day and be thankful that she had so many people that love her by her side celebrating!
Like I mentioned, I did not take hardly any pictures throughout the day, so I will share some pictures my mom was able to snap for us!
My sister, Kristin, was able to come home from Ireland to help us celebrate!
Still in shock that my baby girl is a 1 year old! Scarlett, I cannot wait to see what you learn and who you become in this next year! Happy 1st birthday!
Auburn Artisan 