The Birthday Photo Booth

Since Hez's birthday was at a park, I didn't feel the need (or desire!) to do any organized sort of game. But I did want something fun for everybody to do, so I decided to construct a photo booth of sorts. It was pretty inexpensive, the frame is just a few pieces of PVC and the fabric is some sort of fake cheap velvet. I used iron tape to make a simple curtain to hang from the frame, no sewing required! The one thing I was worried about was sunlight shinging through the back since the fabric was so thin, but I clamped a piece of black-out fabric I already had to the back.But I wanted more than just a red curtain, and since nobody seems to sell large circus font letters I decided to make them myself. The actual project was easy, but incredibly time consuming. First I cut out two of each letter and used strips of poster board to make some 3D letters.Then several layers of paper mache.Then some spray paint.Then a little gold paint for details.And once I set up the tripod and camera I ended up with this! Next to our 'photo booth' was a bucket full of props: the barbell from his invitation picture, top hats, big glasses, mustaches and clown noses...most of which was from the dollar store. I did a vintage effect on all the photos too.

House Party

Since his party was the Saturday before his birthday, I couldn't not do anything for his actual birthday. So I blew up some extra balloons to jazz up our light, hung a little streamer and made some carrot cupcakes. We hadn't made plans for anybody to come over, but Hez's cousins got to spend the night and celebrate with us!I almost want to leave them up, they make the light look way cooler.
Static electricity!
This time around, he actually blew out the candle! Insanely adorable.
But still no frosting mess!

Come Join the Fun! Hezekiah is Turning ONE!

Party day! We celebrated Hezekiah's First Birthday with lots of friends and family at a local park. I headed over an hour before the party to set up (with some help from my little sis) and quickly realized an hour to set up the overload of stuff I planned was not enough! But it all came together in the end! I also learned that those super cool really big balloons will not float with regular helium. Major bummer!

Anyways, on to the pictures. And get ready, there's a lot of them! Here's the fun dessert table! I spent a good portion of time making the marquee sign with Hezzy's name and Christmas lights (and had lots of help drilling holes from the husband). I got the idea after seeing that Sandy over at The Winding Road had made her own (for her own amazing circus party)...I figured it would be easy enough! But oh man, it took forever and threading in the lights (couldn't we have just spelled "HEZ" instead?!) was a seemingly grueling task. But it turned out so cool it was totally worth it.All the goodies...cupcakes, licorice (which I've apparently misspelled!), lollipops, a bucket of toys, stick on mustaches, peanuts and lots of balloon-animal balloons (with a little air pump too!).Elephant Peanuts! I took a sharpie to an old burlap sack I had lying around and filled it with peanuts.Cupcakes in all sorts of flavors: vanilla, peanut butter-chocolate, red velvet, German chocolate and even gluten-free vegan. And I kept it simple with the decorations by gluing scrapbook paper onto toothpicks for little flags.Hezzy's cake! And this was no ordinary cake, lucky baby got a whole-wheat carrot apple spice with cream cheese frosting. He's not one to gravitate towards sweeter foods (yay veggies!) and he loves cream cheese on toast, so I figured if he had a preference, or could talk, he'd ask for something like this. And that little strongman is a favorite toy of his, and how we decided on the whole concept of vintage circus.Next to the dessert table was another table with two buckets. And a beloved stuffed animal of Hez. We encouraged everybody to bring books and toys to donate to our local children's center instead of bringing presents and I was so excited to see the loads of donations our friends and family brought! I ended dropping off two boxes and a large bag full of toys, books and clothes!
The other bucket was filled with little party favor bags for all the kids, tied with a little "Thanks for coming to my party!" tag.I stuffed the bags with a box of old school animal cookies, play dough and a little circus animal and then it was up to the kids to fill it with whatever else they wanted from the treat table.A somewhat last minute thing I thought of (since we're frequently browsing our soon-to-be-closed-clear out-sales Borders) was to put a book out for everybody to sign. And how perfect that I was able to find Dr. Seuss's Birthday book on clearance!Here's a view of all the tables at the park. It was such a nice day for a park party, although the wind kept blowing away all our balloons!
Unfortunately, I totally forgot to get a picture of the table set-up I did, so here's a lame 'practice run' picture that was set up on my dining table. I'll admit, I'm a little OCD when I plan stuff. But basically, each table had a tin bucket (I had decorated them with duct tape) filled with popcorn, a circus animal with balloons tied to them, and some frames. The frames had scrapbook paper with a number "1" on one side and a picture of Hez on the other. And since I had 12 frames, I put a picture of him from each month.Popcorn buckets for the table, decorated with colored duct tape.And whoever sent back their RSVP tickets got their name thrown in a little raffle to win a Jamba gift card and a little puzzle and candy!And the best part of any one year old party has to be the cake...or the mess of cake! But this guy is as clean as they come and most of the mess on him was from us trying to encourage him to dig in. He did get a little into it when I gave him his spoon (he's very into feeding himself right now!).And after a minute, he just froze. So many friends and family singing and cheering him on just got to him and he didn't cry or anything, he just looked down in a blank stare and wouldn't move or look at anybody. Pretty cute, and a sure sign that there wasn't going to be any cake on the face today!But it did make for a very simple clean up...guess we didn't have to undress him after all!I've still got some more pictures from the party, namely the photobooth! But I think I've reached my picture limit for one post so they will come later! Also, I wont post anybody's pictures without them being cool with it, so if you don't mind that your photobooth picture gets posted I'd love it if you left me a comment! They are insanely cute!

Happy Birthday Hezzy!

My awesome husband carried our chair down Stockdale Hwy just so I could find the perfect grassy spot to take pictures on. Totally worth it because I love how fun they turned out, and we took his Easter pictures too. Happy First Birthday Hezekiah! I'll save all the sappy stuff for the baby book!

This guy loves his bike and always has the biggest proudest smile when he's riding on it.

Party pictures are on their way, I just finished editing them!

Loaded Up

The morning of the party, I felt like I was moving to the park.

Hez's birthday was awesome, working on getting the party pictures uploaded! I'm hitting myself on the head for not taking more pictures, especially of all the stuff I worked on, but I totally did not allot myself enough time to get the park set up before I had to run home and get Eli and Hezzy, so I was in a mad rush and didn't get a chance to whip out the camera before everybody showed up. It was loads of fun though!

Little Baker

We spent all day baking and are ready to go for the party tomorrow!Rule is...if you help make it, you help eat it. And he happily obliged.

Countdown

Only four more days till party time! Everything is finally starting to come together, and our dining room is filled with party stuff, can't wait to have the table back again!

1st Birthday: The Props!

The silver bucket he's sitting on? It held paper fans at our wedding! The backdrop is several yards of an inexpensive velvet kind of material draped over the gate on our front porch. It'll show up again at the party in something fun I am planning! Notice some snack looking things sitting in his lap? Yup, that was the only way I could keep him sitting in one spot! If you look close he even has a little crumb on his chin, which I choose not to Photoshop off because it was too cute, and so him to always be eating those "greenies" we like to call them. Not to mention his uncooperative hair! I rubbed in some baby lotion and attempted a little comb-over, but you better believe it doesn't stay like that for long! I love his fly aways!

Strong men need heavy things to lift! And since a baby safe barbell is not a thing they tend to sell anywhere, it was of course time to make one. It cost around $12 to make...Styrofoam seems really expensive for what it is! But very simple. I cut a thick dowel to size, and pushed it into the Styrofoam balls. Then I paper mached a few layers on the balls to give myself a good surface to paint and also to keep them from mashing. After the mache was dry I glued the dowel in with some school glue and spray painted the entire thing black. The unevenness of the mache ended up giving a really cool effect of old iron weights! I added the "1" on in Photoshop.

1st Birthday: The Outfit

When I dressed Hez up for his "strong man" portraits for his invitations, I knew stripes were a must! This $5 navy striped onesie from Old Navy would have done the trick, but sleeveless would have been much better. I grabbed a cheap $3 navy onesie from Target to cut up and use as bias tape. It seemed easier than going to the fabric store although price wise it was probably the same. After cutting off the sleeves, I pinned on the strips from the other onesie (their folded twice just like normal cotton bias tape). After a quick stitch on the machine, this alteration had only taken me around 15 minutes.

1st Birthay: The Invitations!

It's a vintage circus!
I started the invitations months ago. While I made the invitations in Photoshop, I give the idea credit to this etsy invitation. It's exactly what I was looking for! And although mail-back RSVP cards are not the norm for a one year old party, I couldn't help myself. What's a circus without a big red ticket? I created them in photoshop and instead of the normal 'number' on the edge of the ticket, I wrote in each invitees name. And below the "admit one" there is a check box for their RSVP. My plan is to use all the RSVP tickets in a little raffle at the party. The tickets were paired with little navy envelopes ready to mail back, and the invitation was sent in a ruby red envelope with a matching mailing label I created in Word.

Some information blurred for privacy.

Busy

Paper mache
Christmas Lights
Drill
Spray Paint
Duct Tape
Hot Glue
Wood

Using the above materials to make something for Baby's party that I am very excited about and is turning out perfect so far! Ugh, I want to post pictures! But then again...I don't! I'm taking plenty, so after the party I will most definately be posting my DIYs!

The countdown is on!

Only two more months until Baby's birthday! It's bittersweet, as all Momma's know. And while two months can go by so fast, I know there's so much growing he'll have done by the time he turns one. So I'm savoring every little bit of it! But I'm also having lots of fun working on his party...this is the latest paper mache project...

Secrets

I have been working on projects, and I have been taking pictures...but I'm thinking I may hold off on posting them because they are things I am working on for Baby's birthday. Yes, I am that crazy, possibly going way to overboard Momma who has already been planning his first birthday since almost two months ago. But he only turns one once right? I've got a notebook full of lists and stuff I'm trying to plan...it seriously feels like wedding status. But I am totally not one bit ashamed, I'm so excited! And I think I want to keep it (the theme and decor) kind of a suprise. Not like it's anything amazingly grand (or maybe it is....) but I just don't want to spoil anything! So I'm working on several DIY stuff and I'll definately post eventually.

In the meantime, I did find this at Salvation Army for a mere $5 and change. I plan to take out the canvas painting and paint the frame, probably white, and it'll probably end up in our bedroom. Not sure what I'll put inside the frame, several ideas have crossed my mind though. Thought of leaving it just empty and putting it above our bed, thought about some fabric or something, also thought about filling it with a piece of chalkboard painted wood. I'm leaning towards chalkboard right now. But if I don't (or even if I do), I'm on the look out to do a framed chalkboard for Baby's room too. Something at his level that he'll be able to draw on when he gets bigger.