Adalyn's Birthday Party - Decorations & Food

I can't guarantee that I won't still be posting about Adalyn's birthday into next week.  There are so many things I need to post since this is my personal scrapbook... decorations, party pics, Adalyn's monthly picture and also a video of her year of growth pictures, details and links... so many things. I'm going to start with the decorations and food.

Looking through the 350+ pictures from her party I am so sad that I didn't take more pictures than what I did. (I know that sounds crazy!) There were some decorations and some food items that I totally forgot to take pictures of and I'm soo bummed. oh well. We enjoyed seeing the decorations even if they aren't forever in history in my pictures.

I couldn't decide on a "theme" for her birthday, so instead of doing a specific theme, I decided to use the decorations that I had left over from the shower that Lindsy and Billie gave me last year and go with that "theme" of pink and green and use ribbons to tie it all together.

I called my friend Shannon (I'll be posting an entire post of links to shops I used and where I got things.) and told her I didn't know what I wanted but I wanted her to make invitations. I sent her a picture of the "Adalyn" banner from the shower and I told her that I wanted to use that as part of the decorations. After a couple sample invitations she came up with this and I love it!!!

Front door. This was another shower decoration. This lives on Adalyn's bedroom door, so I thought it would be cute to greet our guests!

Jonathan and my dad were very sweet to put up with me NEEDING the pink mesh on the front pole. They did a good job of fluffing:) (Please excuse our blurred out house numbers which makes the pole look dirty.)

As you can see below, the invitation completely "went" with the decorations I already had!  Billie gave me the idea to use the area on and around the fireplace to decorate and I love how it turned out! We put her weekly pictures (weeks 1-16) on the left of the fire place and monthly pictures (months 1-12 and a couple extra close ups) on the right side.

My huge project leading up to the birthday was making a mixbook for each of Adalyn's photo shoots with Jes. So we have baby bump, newborn, 3, 6 and 9 month books and the fireplace was the best place to display for people to look through so little hands of the 9 (!) kids at the party wouldn't get a hold of them. Again, I will share more about my mixbook experience in a later post.

Monthly growth pics. Lindsy came over Friday evening to help with decorations (bless her!! I was about to lose my mind! I was so overwhelmed! And  yet I was still up till midnight finishing decorations!) and she got right to work making these ribbon displays. Don't they look awesome?

Weekly growth pics

View from the living room to the kitchen. Billie came over on Friday night and threw all of the puffs together that you see hanging from the ceiling. I love the festive feel they give the room! I borrowed the table cloth from a friend. The table center are cute little cupcakes Billie made that I have held on to from the shower. Not pictured: Above the kitchen table from the light fixture to the corners of the ceiling, I hung grosgrain ribbon as streamers. I loved the look of the ribbon streamers and now I can save them and use them again next year! Wish I had a picture of how cute it was! Darn it! (Please don't tell anyone that I allowed a 9 month pregnant girl ::cough cough Billie:: to stand on my kitchen table to help secure the ceiling decorations. Pretty sure my mom about had a heart attack thinking that she was going to fall.)

View from the opposite direction. Bad lighting. Sorry.

Food table. We had hot ham and cheese sandwiches, veggies, fruit skewers, chips, pink white chocolate covered pretzels (made with love by my dad!), homemade applesauce, and chocolate chip cookie dough dip with animal crackers and nilla cookies.

(again...bad lighting. These were pink!) We also had pretzel rods you can kind of see in the other pics.

My friend Shannon made cute little name tags for the food that match the invitation. I loved them!

Drink station. We had water and pink lemonade. I threw a scrap piece of fabric (left over from the pillow I made for Adalyn's room last year) on the counter and I think it helped make things pretty.

Shannon offered for me to borrow her mason jars and I loved the idea. (Of course I had seen decorated mason jars on pinterest and loved them.) I first wanted her to make paper decals for them and then decided I'd rather just decorate them with ribbons and then everyone can tell which jar is theirs. I got the paper straws online. I'm seriously in love with this!

Another pinterest idea! We pre-scooped ice cream into large sized cupcake wrappers and left them on a cookie sheet in the freezer. Worked out perfectly!

Dining room. I used the buffet for the cakes and favors. The table we left open so people could eat their food there. The fabric on the table was a $6 piece of fabric I grabbed on a whim one day and thought I could maybe use it somewhere. Well, that table is bigger than most any table cloth, so I was thrilled to find that the fabric covered it nicely!

The apothecary jars are filled with scrap tissue paper from what was cut off of the puffs.

I loved this cake. This isn't from an actual bakery. This is from a person who makes cakes in her home! Again, I didn't have much of an idea for her for what to do with the cake. I told her I was thinking about polka dots and I emailed her the invitation. It's perfect! And it tasted delicious too!

Smash cake! So cute:)

Favors. Shannon made this cute sign that says, "Thanks for making Adalyn's birthday so sweet. When you leave please take a treat." We had ice cream shaped bubbles for the kids...

And yummy cookies for the kids and the adults! The cake lady did these and also "bagged and tagged" them with cute stickers!

The throne!

I saw a high chair skirt on pinterest (in primary colors and also in tulle) and had to do it. My mom was a good sport and stayed up late to help glue it together. Such a cute way to fancy up the high chair!

I love this birthday hat. You do know I'll be forcing her to wear it for years! And the bib was a baby gift from Lindsy and I thought it perfectly matched the decorations and the birthday girl's outfit so she needed to wear it to eat cake!

This post is long enough as it is, so you'll just have to wait for a post of the actual party! Now you get to guess whether Adalyn tore into her cake or just sat and stared at it:)  Seriously though, if it wasn't for my girlfriends and Jonathan and my parents there is no way I could have pulled this party off! Between Shannon loaning me decorations and Billie and Lindsy taking time away from their own families on a friday night in order to help me, and my mom working so hard to clean the house and make the food and help with decorations, and of course my dad with the pretzels and Jonathan and my dad doing the "guy" stuff that isn't quite as glamorous but needed to be done. It was seriously as amazing in person as it was in my head. And if you know me well, you know that nothing ever measures up to my ideas in my head! So, a big thank you to everyone who helped!!