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 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. 
Rule is...if you help make it, you help eat it. And he happily obliged.
And here's the after! Taking down the closets made the hugest difference, and raising the ceiling and adding can lights really opens up the space too! Oops, I still need to put the air vent cover on! I opted out of a dishwasher (I know, I know!) for more cabinet space and Eli was able to put in a gas line so we could use our gas stove. The original stove was on the left side of the kitchen, and we also moved the fridge to the spot that was previously a closet. 
The before view from the dining room: 
Rather than keeping the same set-up with the snack bar (don't know if that's the right name for it), I choose to have a large extended countertop with lots of drawers facing the dining room. The drawers are smaller/shorter...only 12 inches deep rather than the standard 24 which would have been too deep for the space. They are perfect for storing all of my baking things, linens and some tableware. And the extra big counter space is awesome for rolling out cookies! I have shelves to hang up to the left of where the last upper cabinet (above the cake stand). Just have to do it! 
I have a 
And here's extra storage we were able to create by hanging a few shelves. We keep a few small appliances and Hez's food, dishes and bottles here for easy access. And under the shelves is a perfect spot to tuck away a trash can.
I couldn't put cabinets above the fridge because of the attic access door, so I keep two big baskets on top that usually hold things like paper towels and wine. If the attic access looks like it's falling, that's probably because it sort of is. It still needs to be nailed in, so it's just kind of sitting there right now.
The biggest thing we have left is the backsplash. I'm not looking forward to spending the money on it, but am trying to keep an eye out at Home Depot for clearance tile. I picked up some little subway glass tiles for the bathroom for around $2.50 sq/ft and would love if I could find another deal like that, but it might take a while since the kitchen needs quite a bit of tile! I think eventually it might be cool to hang something in front of the little shelving nook, but as long as it stays uncluttered I'm not to worried about it. I also need to finish the teapot canvas painting, I started them when Hez was just a newborn and still have to do some final painting on it. At least it's hung up?
And it was a huge ongoing project for the next several months, although to date it still is not finished. Here's the view from the dining room. 
Then I paper 
The 