Cannon's 1st Birthday Party - Part 1

This was a big weekend for us - we celebrated Cannon's 1st birthday with a fun party!  We had so much fun celebrating our little guy with family and friends - everything went perfectly.  I'm not going to lie though - I am wiped out!!  So much planning and organzing went into making his party into what I wanted but I really enjoyed putting it all together. And of course it was worth all the work to celebrate his special day.  I had a lot of help from Andy's mom and grandparents - which I couldn't have done it all without them.  Andy's mom made so many delicious dips and tasty foods which was so appreciated...b/c lets face it...I don't do too well in the kitchen! :)  We decided to have the party at Andy's grandparent's house b/c they live on some land and its just so beautiful out there - and much more room to run around.  So thankful that they are always willing to open their house up for whatever party we may be throwing.  Our house definitley wouldn't be able to accommodate all our guests.

Its still so strange for me to realize his 1st birthday party is now behind us.  I started thinking about this day probably when he was only a couple months old at most - ha!  I started browsing around online looking for cute ideas that I could use to plan his big day...of course when you start looking at ideas that far out...it leaves lots of time to continually change your mind - which of course for me is no big surprise.  I finally landed on the idea of just doing his theme in primary colors - red, blue, orange, yellow & green.  I loved how simple it was to find matching things and how easy it was to create different things to go with it.  I dove in and started planning and creating right away.

First off was the invitations...I had found some ideas online that I was really liking and wanted to do something like them.  Well the weekend we met up with Andy's sister to take pics for Cannon's bday, I emailed her the night before an idea of what I was looking at for an invite and jokingly asked her if she could do something like that...well that next morning she sent me her version of it and I LOVED it....so we had the invite done - yay!  Then we got that amazing pic that she captured - I was so thrilled how it all turned out!

Once we got the invite all finalized, I was working on this party full time.  I love doing crafty things and I just kept adding ideas to my list of what I wanted to do for his birthday.  I actually had to cut out some ideas b/c it was just becoming too much for me to get done by the deadline.

I ended making several things to go with the theme...I made the banner...unfortunately we totally forgot to take a pic of it at the party.  But I took one tonight in our house to show what it looked like.  It ended up being way longer than I was originally planning...but it worked out perfectly since we did his party outdoors so we had tons of room.

and some close ups of it....

And here are some shots of all the other things at the party - the delicious food, and all the fun party stuff.

We had a fruit tray, veggie trays, chips & salsa, chicken enchilada dip (my absolute favorite thing ever!!!), corn casserole dip, a cheese ball with crackers, meatballs, and some little cocktail weiners that are in a really tasty sauce.  So much delicious food!

Then we had another table set up for all the drinks and party favors.  We just did a variety of sodas (aka 'pop' for my friends and family up north...hehehe) for the adults and the kids had a variety of juices.  For the party favors for all the guests I did little bags of skittles tied up with a cute color coordinating ribbon and made little favor tags that said "Thanks for making my 1st birthday so fun...Love, Cannon".  For the kids I also bought little buckets of sidewalk chalk and wrapped them up the same way and attached the same little tag.  Of course after several guests had left, I had totally forgotten about the party favors...so needless to say I am sitting here stuffing my face full of skittles...lol!!!  

and some closeups of the party favors

We also had lots of fun treats.  We had a cake, cupcakes and some fun marshmellow treats that I had found online.  The kids loved them...I think I will be making those for some more parties down the road :)

Here are the cakes we ordered just from a local grocery store.

I really liked Cannon's little cake - thought it was too cute!

We also got a bunch of cupcakes as well.  I kind of had to b/c one of the first things I made a while back was this cupcake stand and I wanted to be sure to use it!  I also made the cupcake toppers too to add some more color to the yummy cupcakes.

And here are the yummy marshmellow treats that were definitely a kid favorite!  They were just so easy for them to grab and go!  I just spray painted the baskets and added some coordinating ribbon and finished them off by adding some extra cup cake toppers to decorate them.

For the kids we rented a little moonwalk/slide combo.  They had a great time on it - definitely worth it to keep them entertained.  I didn't get a good shot of the moonwalk...but this is the one we ended up getting - worth every penny!

 Just wanted to say thank you again to everyone that helped make this party a success - couldn't have done it without y'all! 

And a special thanks to Andy's sister, Missy..for saving the day with her camera - yet again!  My camera seems to have an issue with major events in Cannon's life.  Almost a year to the day, it just died on me again.  Last year it happened at the WORST possible time ever - in the delivery room!!!  We managed to get 2 pics right after he was born and that was it - it just died - the batteries were fried.  And now a year later...same thing again - right when he was about to dive into his 1st birthday cake ever!  This camera seems to just drain the batteries in an insanely fast amount of time - I had just replaced the batteries a few days before so they should have been totally fine!  And the strangest thing is that they don't do it all the time - only at the worst possible times.  So anyway..luckily she captured all the special moments for Cannon's 1st bday :)

I think I will finish off all the party fun on the next post - this one is getting way too long! Stay tuned for Cannon's Birthday Party - Part 2 :)