Leah's First Birthday Party

So I probably started thinking about Leah's first birthday party about a few weeks after she was born...  I even created a private Pinterest board so no one would see what a nerd I was trying to plan that soon. When Leah was four or five weeks old, I went to a first birthday party up the street in my neighborhood. The theme was pajamas and pancakes and I loved it! It seemed easy enough and I didn't want to stress too much about a party that Leah wouldn't even remember.

Fast forward about 2-3 months before Leah's first birthday and I realized that I hadn't even given a second thought to the planning of her big party. While I was in Hawaii, I toyed with doing an Hawaiian themed party, but I decided it involved more planning and decorating that I was capable of or wanted to do. One night I got on Pinterest and typed in pajamas and pancakes and I knew immediately that I was going to do this for Leah's first birthday. It was brilliant - cheap food, the most comfortable dress, and all over before nap time! I found cute invites, printed a couple, but then just invited everyone via Facebook.

Pinterest was full of cute ideas and most of them wouldn't really work for the 1-4 year old audience that I would have attending Leah's party, but SOME of them would. Here is a screenshot of my "secret" board.

My first over-the-top idea from Pinterest was to create personalized monogrammed blankets for all the kiddos at the party as favors. Joann Fabrics had a 50% off sale on its blizzard fleece and then we had a 25% off the whole order coupon as well, so the fabric for each of the blankets was pretty cheap. The hardest part was picking out unique fabrics that each one of my little guests would like. My mom has a sewing machine that does embroidery so that part was easy. I knew I wanted to have a finished edge on my blankets and I knew I didn't want to just tie them off, so I skowered the internet looking for ideas. Using my mad Google skills, I finally found (not on Pinterest) a grandma lady's low tech blog with instructions on how to use a serger with #10 crochet thread to finish the edges on a fleece blanket. Yay! Plan hatched! We ended up using crochet thread on both the top and the bottom instead of the woolly nylon because it looked better.

We shopped about three weeks before the party and started the blankets right away. I didn't want to save anything for the last minute. It took about three nap times to complete the blankets and I actually really enjoyed doing them. The only part I didn't end up doing was the serger because the tension was crazy tricky, so my mom did that. We did 13 blankets in all for 13 little friends. I forgot to take a picture with my nice camera the day of the party so here is a picture from a couple weeks before the party when I finished up a few later RSVP's and was wrapping them with tulle and little cute tags.

I feel like making these blankets was completely over the top, but I really loved doing them and hey, you only get to go overboard once for your first baby's first birthday!

You may have noticed from my blog that I like taking pictures, so when I saw the picture collage in the shape of a 1 on Pinterest, I couldn't help myself. My parents have a laser color printer so I printed off 9 sheets of 12 pictures each with the square Instagram look. I had too many pictures, so I ended up taping together two huge pieces of white poster board and making a border. It turned out okay and served its purpose to add decor to a big empty wall in my house.

Speaking of decor, that was probably the only real stressful part of getting ready for this party. It is no mystery that Doug and I are super cheap. We have been in our house now for 6 years and I barely had any pictures on the wall and we were still using an old Walmart cheap entertainment center from 10 years ago that I bought my sophomore year in college. It may have had a slight tilt to it. Our front living room had a single black recliner that I bought for Doug for Christmas several years back and there was a huge empty wall where we had been planning (for about 3 years) to put a love seat. We rarely have people over due to the out-of-the-way location of our home, but we were going to have a bunch of people finally coming over. Doug was less than willing to contribute to my crazy task financially and I kind of have limited funds being my TpT earnings are my only source of income. So I got on Wayfair.com and ordered a new entertainment center (with doors so Leah couldn't push buttons) and a love seat to go in the front room. I also ordered a square coffee table from IKEA (that took forever to get to my house because of some serious shipping mishaps!). So combined with all of Leah's birthday gifts that were coming from out of town family, we were getting packages just about every day.

I even convinced Doug to let me take a family picture on the new couch. It took a bit of photoshopping, but I used the clone tool to get the best faces and hair from the 15 or so tripod shots I got. The hardest part was fixing Doug's slouch which make his head a full inch below the top of mine... But alas Photoshop is wondrous and amazing and I think the picture turned out great. I did the Staples black and white over sized blueprint mounted on foam board. It turned out okay, but I think next family picture, I will just spend more than $6 for a nicer quality large family picture for the wall.

So yes, all of this home furnishing and decorating had nothing to do with Leah's actual party, but I'm glad now that I went ahead a did all the stuff because I feel overall happier about the appearance of my home now.

So fast forward to the actual morning of the party. The house was spotless and my parents plus Johnny and Chris got there early to help with set up. Johnny was in charge of tying three helium balloons to the mailbox which was apparently too hard and took about 20 minutes.  Chris was in charge of hanging four pictures on the wall... to make it look like I lived in my house, my dad was blowing up balloons and watching Leah while my mom cut up fruit and I set up a kids table.

The plan for the party was to have breakfast, play with toys upstairs, and do fruit loop necklaces from 9-10am. Then we would open Leah's presents from 10-10:20. After presents, we would give the kids their blankets as a thank you so they could cuddle them while my mom read The Hungry Caterpillar from 10:20-10:40 Then we would sing happy birthday, do the cake smash and cupcakes from 10:40-11am. Simple enough plan and it worked out great. (Can you tell I'm an overthinker??)

My BIG little brother Chris took pictures during the party and did a great job! I took the camera during the cake smash and was able to capture some real treasures of Leah really enjoying her cake! 

I got this cute idea to do fruit loop necklaces from Pinterest and I had made an example one ahead of time for Leah. When I put it on her at the beginning of the party, she had absolutely no interest and wanted to take it off UNTIL... I put a fruit loop in her mouth. For the rest of the party, she was a fruit loop monster! She was stealing kids necklaces and stuffing fistfuls of fruit loops into her mouth.

My mom and dad took on the task of making the pancakes and waffles for the party along with occasionally multitasking and holding Leah while I was greeting guests. They were awesome!!!

This picture shows the breakfast set up with some of the kids sitting at a little plastic table to eat their breakfast and some at the bigger table. Most of the parents just sat on the floor or stood nearby and ate their breakfast.

Leah was crazy wired her whole party (even before the cake) and I could not get her to sit and open presents.  Here is a picture of me opening her presents while she goes over and steals more fruit loops!

These are a few pictures of the kids with their new blankets.

Here is a picture of my mom reading the story to everyone.

I think the smash cake turned out super cute! I found a little tutorial online that was super easy and was exactly what I was looking for. It was my first time trying to ice something like that and I was happy with the results even though they weren't perfect! :)

We sang happy birthday and I helped Leah blow out her candle...

Then she started digging in! I quickly stole the camera away from my brother and parked myself on the opposite end of the table to snap a ton of pictures while everyone else enjoyed their cupcakes.

It is hard to pick a favorite, but I think this one is it!

Overall, we had a great time. Leah took a super long nap afterwards. And finally, I'm glad that I have another year before I do one of these again.  :)

Happy birthday my sweet Leah!

Leah 1 Year Old!

Happy FIRST birthday Leah!! It seems like it has been FOREVER since I wrote your 11 month post! I guess your first birthday party took a lot out of me. I will blog about that fun-ness later... So now to your monthly update. Right now you weigh 20 pounds and are 31 inches tall. You are wearing 12 month clothes, but some of them have been a little big on you which is against your earlier growing trends. You're kind of on the smaller side. I'm interested to see how you stack up against other one year olds on the percentiles when we go to your one year well-visit.

This picture was a year in the making! I love how the bib shows how she is changing in size!

I wouldn't say that you are running quite yet, but you have definitely picked up speed. You have tried jumping, but you aren't getting much air at this point. You crawl up stairs at lightning speed, but you still do not go down stairs. You stand at the top and holler for me to come get you if you want to go downstairs. If you are about three steps up and you decide you want to go down though, you slide down on your belly. As far as climbing, you will stand on things that are next to something that you want to get to that is high, but you aren't getting on couches or chairs yet. This increased speed makes it harder to stop your sneaky messes!

You are quite the loud babbler! Most of your talking is nonsensical, but you have down mama and dada. We have been working on bye bye. We were over at Grandma and Grandpa H's house with the missionaries for dinner and you did a hand clap motion and said "buh buh buh." The next day at Walmart you did the same with the lady at customer service. The other day your daddy and I were trying to tell you that the front door was HOT from the sun because you kept on putting your hand on it and smiling. We kept on telling you hot and you walked around going, "hah, hah!" You seemed like you were trying to saying it. ('H' is not usually one of your babbling sounds.)

Boy! Do you love to eat! At this point, you are not too much of a picky eater. We got you some divided plates and silverware to eat with since you had been showing interest in eating like mommy and daddy. You can stab and get some food into your mouth with great difficulty, but you are very motivated so that is great! You still have only those two bottom teeth, so that makes eating difficult. You try just about anything that we put on your plate, but you mostly eat mandarin oranges, green beans, and different varieties of noodles. You love any sort of dessert or sweet thing! 

During General Conference, Grandma H usually has a bunch of veggies, chips, and cheese on the coffee table. We had put everything in the center where you had difficulty reaching it, so you walked around the room and gave everyone big cheesy smiles in order to beg food off of them. It was so cute! Your Uncle Johnny was laying on some bean bag chairs drinking orange juice and you literally tackled him and climbed on top of him to get some. Haha!

You have loved getting into my kitchen cabinets for a while and you are very good at pulling everything out of them. Your latest thing though is to walk around closing things - cabinets, drawers, doors, etc. If you are being fussy while I am cooking dinner, I'll quickly open up a bunch of drawers and cabinets in order to keep you busy while I get a little more of dinner done. We got you a play kitchen for your birthday present. It had so many little pieces that it took me almost 4 hours to put together! You so far enjoy opening and closing the cabinets and transferring your play food from the fridge to the sink.

Your determined personality still asserts itself often. If I try to keep you from getting into something, you always go right back to it. Sometimes, I think that you just like to do things to get into trouble, but I think your curiousity is just spiked whenever I tell you that you can't do something! We put hair bands on the cabinet doors whenever we visit Grandma and Grandpa H's house, but that doesn't keep you from getting in the drawers! You pulled out all the Tupperware and cookie cutters from this drawer and had quite the blast doing it!

You love animals and bugs and the outside. Now that it is Spring, you love any chance we take to go outside. Lately, you have started doing this high-pitched squeal each time I open the door to the outside. Yeah... That needs to stop. When you are inside, you get bored quickly and can become very clingy (even with your loads of toys!) But, as soon as we are outside, you don't even need a single toy to be content. Yesterday, you walked around and just picked up sticks, you sat next to a bush and watched bugs fly around... you were just happy. 

We go to weekly play dates at Miss Caitlin's and Brooke's house. You love getting kisses from their pug Sway. They also have three goats and a donkey that you love to visit when we are there. I am looking forward to all of the adventures we will have this year in the nice weather!

We have had some fun times recently on Grandma and Grandpa H's trampoline. You love to walk and crawl around on it (you aren't jumping on your own yet.) You love it when I pick you up and jump while holding you!

There are a ton of kids in our neighborhood and several nearby that you love to go play with. You are the youngest one in the bunch by a year, but that doesn't mean that you have problems keeping up! Most of your friends are at least a year older than you, but you find other kids fascinating.

As far as your schedule, you are still napping twice a day and nursing about 4-5 times a day. You wake up around 7:30am and go to sleep at 8pm with naps around 9:30-11am and 2-4pm. You drink whole milk in your sippy cup now, so weaning might be somewhere in your near future, but I'm not going to force anything. Some days it seems like you may be transitioning to one nap, but then other days you still get grumpy around 9 am.

I love you my little girl! You are so much fun!