ryann's first birthday party

Sit back and relax.  This is going to be a long one!  Sorry about that :o).  I thought about breaking a lot of this up in to different posts, but... well I didn't.  So here you go!  (All photos by Anne Pendleton Photography)

First up, the invites.  I meant to take a picture of them with the envelopes, but I haven't yet.  And I wanted to publish this post today.  So... you get what you get and you don't throw a fit, ok?  :o)  Have I mentioned my love for chevron?  I finally was able to fit it into an invitation design.  The little owl I designed myself.

Oh the dessert table.  I think it came out pretty fun.

Our desserts consisted of pink velvet cupcakes with brown sugar cream cheese frosting, lemon cupcakes (er, from a box I believe), chocolate crackle cookies, cheesecake pops and owl sugar cookies (made by a local bakery).  My friend Jenny made the adorable little cake.

My mom had the yellow polka dot table cloths made, I felt like they really added a ton color to the room.  Oh my goodness, can we talk about the adorable owl cake topper?  I ordered it from an etsy shop, KidsCakes, and was so excited when it arrived in the mail.  I was a little worried about putting it on the cake because it was made of fondant and very heavy, but the cake was pretty dense and held up.  The cupcake liner pom balls were the ones my mom made for my baby shower (the entire reason for the pink and yellow color scheme, I wanted to reuse those guys!).  For the backdrop I quickly 'framed' some photos of Ryann, and hung them up with command strips.  The middle frame holds the onesie she came home from the hospital in.  I can't believe that thing was so huge on her.  I found my four cake stands on amazon.

I can't forget to mention who made all the delicious food for this party... my amazing mother.  I seriously couldn't do half this stuff without her.  Usually I come up with all of the ideas, and she does the cooking and helps make everything else happen.  The party was at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, so I felt like we needed heavier appetizers since it might run in to some people's dinner time.  We had fresh fruit, spring vegetable pasta salad, chicken fajita dip, cocktail shrimp and Mongolian beef sticks (recipes for the beef and the pasta salad coming soon!).  As far as I could tell everything went over pretty well.  I highly recommend the pasta salad and the chicken fajita dip.  I've had the fajita dip a few times and it never fails to satisfy.  We also put together some raspberry lemonade punch, but I never had any.  Chris seemed to like it though.  Oh, and the water bottles were adorned with some cute little labels I made.

Some of the decor... We got some bright flowers and balloons to dress up the front porch.  It was so cold that weekend (hello, it snowed!) that we had to bring the flowers in and out of the garage to keep them from freezing.  I talked about how I made that pink wreath here, and yarn wrapped R here.  Um, should we talk about the birthday banner?  I made it with my silhouette machine, but do you notice anything?  Yeah, at some point I flipped the a and the d in birthday.  As far as I know, no one noticed.  I didn't even catch it until the morning after the birthday party.  [smacks forehead with palm]  Whatever.  I used an owl pitcher as a flower vase, the little pink R I happened to walk by at Hobby Lobby.  In the family room I used some cute ribbon I found at Michaels to string Ryann's monthly photos on the mantel.  The only other decor in the family room was balloons.

Ryann's shirt came from The Chidren's Place (on sale!), and the skirt I ordered online, but can't for the life of me find the website right now (The particular brand of pettiskirt seems to be a bit shorter than others, which is good for itty bitty girlies with short legs, if I ever figure it out I'll be sure to let you know!).  The oh so adorable diaper cover was made by the etsy shop Stitcheroos.  She used the owl graphic I created for the invites for the design, and she was amazing to work with.  It is a good thing we got that cute little cover (I almost decided against it) since she threw up all over herself less than halfway through the party.

For all of the adult guests I made snack mix bags for them to take home.  I swear it was like the ultimate snack mix (ok not quite, but it was pretty dang good).  We got peanut butter filled pretzels, chex mix, chocolate covered raisins, animal crackers and pink & yellow m&m's.  There were several bags left over, and it has taken lots and lots and LOTS of willpower for me not to sit and scarf down a ton.  Oh and the silver tub they are in?  We had it at our wedding (honestly, can't remember what for).  At the last minute I couldn't find a tub big enough to put them in, and then remembered I had a few of those in the basement.  My mom quickly ripped off the coral ribbon and stuck on some pink pom trim.  Bam.  Cute favor tub.  For the few kiddos at the party, we grabbed some polka dot buckets from the Easter section at Target, as well as some bubbles, crayons and a couple other goodies.

I think that about covers all the details.  Let me know if you have any questions about all of the party stuff.  I hate to admit I've already started pinning things as inspiration for the next birthday party.  :o)

Oh wait, do any of you like the party printables?  I hope so.  Because if you've made it this far on the post you have the chance to win them.  One commenter on this post will win a set of Ry's party printables (invites, food label cards, thank you tags, name tags and water bottle labels), customized to your party color scheme.  You won't win the actual product, but I'll send you the files.  You have until 10pm CST on Monday to comment!

Happy Friday everyone!