Party Time! (recap)

So... My baby girl turned one last month. And we had a party for her. It was exciting and sad (She's growing up SO FREAKING FAST!!) and so, so much fun. We invited a whole bunch of Leah's friends - it was all people who know and love Leah, specifically (not necessarily just her parents, or even her big sister) and it ended up being twenty something adults and eleven kids! Crazy! The prize for longest distance traveled to be there goes to John, Kelli, Quinn, and Caroline who came all the way from Texas. We are so glad they were able to be here for Leah's special day!

I wanted the birthday party to go with the theme of Leah's bedding (pink! and elephants!) and I spent a lot of time on Pinterest looking at decorating and food ideas, and I have to say, I'm pretty proud of how things turned out:


You can't see the balls hanging from the window very well, but they're made of string and Leah LOVED them (Eden helped me make them!). They're hanging from hooks on her ceiling above her bed now. I got an elephant paper punch and had elephant "confetti" cut out from the scrapbook paper used for the banner.

As for food, since the party was 3pm (post-nap) I didn't do a ton of food. I wanted everything to be finger-food (to reduce the cleanup!) I made cake pops (white cake with vanilla coating and strawberry cake with chocolate coating), a "smash cake" for Leah (strawberry cake with strawberry frosting), roll-up sandwiches, and PB&J sandwiches on wheat bread cut up with cookie cutters. We also had cheese and crackers, and big sliced pepperoni. And I picked up a bunch of pink and white candy at CVS (such a great thing having a girly party just before Valentine's Day!). Some of my coworkers made a bit of fun of me when I mentioned that I had bought two big bags of M&Ms in Valentine's Day colors (red, dark pink, light pink, and white) and then picked out all the reds because they didn't go with the theme - but that's how I roll, y'all. And some of you out there in the Interwebz will totally get that. And an awesome friend from our community group brought chocolate-dipped fruit and put together the (pink!) punch for us.

OK, now that I read all of that, maybe it was a lot of food. But there were 30-something people. And I didn't make much of it...

Anywho.

Leah was in perfect party form after a nice long nap (I swear, despite the frowny face, she was a delight):


She spent most of the party with this guy, who I'm now calling her boyfriend, Paul. She won't leave his arms for anyone willingly. EVEN MOMMY.

She got some good playing time in with her baby friends, too (there were two little girls in our group of friends born just about three months after Leah, and they're buddies):




And, of course, there were lots of bigger kids, too:

And some cake eating!!:


And a moment to relax with Mommy and Eden on the stairs away from the hustle of the par-tay... (Notice the matching dresses - courtesy of Auntie Megan, of course):

It was a fun day. Lots of people in our little condo, but we love the energy and vibrance of a full house. And it was really special that all of those people love our little lady so much. I think she had absolutely no clue what was going on, but she had a great time!