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!!

Recuperation...

You all. I am so exhausted. Still. A day later. Adalyn's party was awesome and I was thrilled by how the cake and decorations turned out. We had a great time with family and friends! When I look around my house I can still see some lingering balloons and decorations but I'm past the point of any more clean up. It can wait until tomorrow. For now, here is a picture. Maybe in the next couple days I can tackle the 350+ pictures that we took so I can write an actual party post.

Happy Birthday Adalyn!

This year has been the fastest year of my life. I've enjoyed every single moment spent with my sweet baby girl and I love every new stage that she enters, but I still can't believe that I don't have a newborn any more! Today has been a day of remembering back. Last year at this time... All day long I'd look at the clock and picture what stage of labor I was in. Jonathan and I took the day off to have a family day to spend together with Adalyn. She is such a joy!

Last year...

This Year...

Adalyn started the day with her favorite breakfast. Bananas and YoBaby!

Then she wore her cute birthday shirt to run errands with mommy and daddy and then had some play time.

Then the UPS man brought her new squeaker shoes that I ordered from Totsy a few weeks ago. Two pairs $12 each and $0 shipping. Score! And she LOVES hearing them squeak!

 Then she opened her cards. She thoroughly enjoyed playing with the envelopes:) 

 Then she opened one gift from mommy and daddy (a toy I bought at a consignment sale in August and had set it aside for later). She loved it!

After Adalyn went to bed (I really wanted to hold her all night!) Jonathan and I hooked up the video camera to our TV and watched all of our home videos from delivery day through the entire year. I'm not going to lie. I was an emotional basket case. Jonathan kept asking if my tears were happy or sad. BOTH. Where did my newborn go? But oh my do I love her so much and I can't wait to start this next year with her! We are so very blessed! I can't wait for her party on Saturday and to have our house full of family and friends celebrating Adalyn's first year of life!

Happy Birthday Jonathan!

Today is Jonathan's 31st birthday! Adalyn and I took him out to Saul Good for dinner and then Jonathan and I enjoyed Caramanda's Cupcakes! I had to get a few pictures of my two favorite people after dinner.

(Adalyn hasn't adjusted to this time change so she was sleepy in these pictures. And her poor rash hasn't gone away yet. See the marks on her face? Poor thing.) 

I am so very blessed to be married to such a wonderful man. He is a loving husband and amazing daddy. I'm so proud of him. He's gotten straight A's in his MBA classes all while excelling in a high stress job.  Next month we will get to celebrate while he walks across stage in his cap and gown. It's amazing how he has been able to juggle school work, work, Adalyn, me, house stuff and friends. He's amazing. And he's all mine! (Although Adalyn holds a piece of his heart now.)  Last year his birthday gift was two days late in the form of a little pink bundle of joy. This year, he got to hear his baby's giggles as he played with her as his birthday gift. She loves her daddy. So sweet.

We love you Jonathan!

Gallery Wall

This project has been many months in the making so grab a cup of coffee and settle in because this post is going to be long. I'm a bit embarrassed to say how long this project actually took me.  And the thing that finally kicked my booty in gear? Having people to the house for Adalyn's birthday party next week! Isn't it sad that it takes having a party to make me finish a project? We had a very blank empty wall in our dining room. I really wanted to bring color into that room because the walls are dark and the furniture is dark, but I didn't know what to hang.

Then one day many months ago I was reading Young House Love and they were doing a gallery hall in their house.  They were using white frames and it looked awesome and all of the sudden I decided I needed to do a gallery wall in our dining room using black frames. I had a bunch of black frames left from the office in our old house.  We had black and white pictures with our friends at sporting events we had been to. Well, our lives have now changed because instead of sports pictures I really wanted some family pictures and pictures of Adalyn in the frames since I literally had ONE picture of her in our main level of the house. And I decided I wanted to do colored pictures in the frames.

So I used YHL's tips on how to arrange a picture wall and how to hang the pictures using paper templates.

I'm embarrassed to say how long these papers lived on my wall. (Please note the Happy Everything Grill = July. But I took this picture when I was ready to take the papers down and the papers had lived on the wall for a couple months.) They drove me crazy, so one day I decided that I just needed to hang the frames!

I got all of the pictures hung and HATED it! Sorry for the phone pic (my new phone takes much better pics but this was months ago!)

There were just too many similar large frames. I needed more variety. My mom volunteered to bring a box of frames that were living in her attic for me the next time she came in town. So, thankfully Jes was willing to come over and she got her creative self on and laid a bunch of frames out on the floor.

I took a picture of the arrangement and then my mom and I carried the frames into the dining room one by one and used my camera to hang them in the right spot.

As I said before, I had wanted to use only black frames and only colored pictures. And my mom said I could paint any of her frames she was giving me. But once I saw the arrangement, I just couldn't bring myself to paint a few of the old frames.  And I also couldn't bring myself to take the black and white pictures of my ancestors out of the frames. These are pictures that were on the walls of our house when I was growing up and I know them well.  The picture at the bottom right? My grandpa when he was 2. He was so cute. This was the last picture of him before he lost one of his eyes in an accident. The other pictures are of my grandpa and his brother and sister and my great grandparents. I love looking at the old fashions. One of my great great uncles was into photography so the pictures are really good. I just love having them on my wall. So I decided I would work them into the arrangement instead of changing them.

There were 3 frames that were just plain ugly and they weren't "good" frames, so I didn't mind spraying on two coats of black paint.

Then a few weeks later (I told you it's been a long project) my mom and I sat down with the laptop at the dining table and figured out which pictures to upload to Snapfish to have printed for which frames. And we decided to add two more 8x10 frames at the bottom of the wall for two reasons. First, I really wanted to have frames for our parent's wedding pictures and second, I felt like the layout was a bit too pointy so I wanted to even it out.  So this is what we came up with (can you believe this is a phone picture? I love my new 4s!):

See the picture of grapes? That was a place holder because I had Adalyn's silhouette made this past week so it was for her silhouette.  See the silhouette that is already on the wall? That was mine from 1982. Once I had her silhouette made, I realized that I actually needed a smaller sized frame for it and that the wall was really off balanced with the two so close together, so I made a few switches and we now have a finished gallery wall!

Here is an up close picture of the wall. The picture in the center was my anniversary present from Jonathan this year. It is a picture from Adalyn's 6 months photos wrapped on wood and it has this awesome shiny metallic-y finish. I love it. You might also be able to spy a few of Jonathan and my baby pictures. I love the mix of the old and new pictures and old and new frames. Even our parents wedding pictures are mixed black and white and color. And we added a few fun pictures of Adalyn with her friends and cousin.

 Please notice the Happy Everything Pumpkin = October

I am so thankful to finally have this project done. Even if it did take me most of this year to do this in stages. Although there will be some pictures that stay, I think it will be fun to swap out pictures from time to time. I love how it filled in the once empty wall.  The other evening, Jes was leaving my house and called me to tell me how cool it looked from outside the front window when the lights are on dim. So of course I had to check it out and I love it! I really am so happy with the end result! What a fun low-cost way to bring some life to my wall!

Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween from my sweet kitty cat! Adalyn didn't go trick-or-treating this year, (she will have enough years of candy ahead of her) but she did go say hi to a few of the neighbors. She mostly just greeted the neighbor-kids as they came asking for candy.

Dakota was thrilled to be dressed as Count Dogula. He liked greeting the trick-or-treaters so that made up for the costume.

Two of our sweet neighbors each gave Adalyn a piece of candy for her to share with her parents. Adalyn got so excited about her new treasures. She did not want to let them go. Here's a picture of her standing (not holding on) clapping with her snickers in her hand. (Thankfully she didn't get it open!) I can't handle the cuteness!

Hope you enjoyed your evening without a tummy ache from too much candy:) We have so much extra candy I don't know what we're going to do with it all! In our old neighborhood we went through bags and bags of candy, but this year we didn't even get through 2 bags and we have 3 unopened bags left! Oh no! Maybe I'll make Jonathan take them to work with him so I'm not tempted! :)