A First Birthday Party

We celebrated Chelsea's first birthday this past weekend with a party at a local restaurant (March + my house + everyone one needs to invite to a first b-day = not enough room for our guests). It was quite nice to not have to worry about set-up and clean-up! I did want to personalize the party as much as possible. I made the above birthday hat for the occassion.

I bought the kids these party favors. I had a photo uploaded to this post but it seems to have disappeared!

I made goodie bags filled with candy. I originally wanted to use circle labels but time lapsed and I didn't order them so the old standby rectangles had to do the trick!

I had this empty frame and just made the sign on the computer and used a rubber stamp and colored markers for the flowers.

We purchased the main birthday party cake but I decided to make the cake she would squish. I'm not much of a cake decorator and too much of a perfectionist so Jeff bought a small store bought cake instead and we did not use this cake. This ended up being a good plan as the pink icing got all messed up during transport to the restaurant.

I had some extra chiffon and used it to decorate her high chair.

Not the best photo, I'm looking a bit weathered by this point! But I wanted to show you a photo of the skirt Chelsea was wearing. I made it! I'm very proud of this as I am not a seamstress by any stretch of the imagination. My in-laws gave me a sewing machine for Christmas and Jeff gave me a bunch of supplies. I purchased the Can Can Skirt pattern from Made. The chiffon I picked doesn't give quite enough of a color variation and there are certainly many mistakes but the ruffles hide a lot! If I attempted this skirt again I would match the base fabric to one of the chiffon colors.

Here is the birthday girl digging in! She had a great time smashing the cake though didn't really eat any of it. A few licks of frosting and she was happy.

Tomorrow is her actual birthday. Jeff and I are taking the day off from work and going to the zoo - more birthday photos to come!