First Birthday Party Memories

My second little boy turns one next week. I can hardly believe it! His big brother will turn 3 in a month. I definitely can't believe I've been a mama for nearly 3 years! Although, of course, it feels like I've known them forever in some ways.  I'm in the middle of planning my little boy's first birthday party and reminiscing about my toddler's first birthday party.

Here is what my toddler's first birthday looked like.  I have so many beautiful photos of my son and our family and friends celebrating at the party, but haven't quite figured out where I sit with putting photos of my kids up on this very new blog.  I'll keep thinking over that one for a bit longer!!!!
You may have already seen some of these pictures in my earlier sewing post.

Mini cupcakes ready to go in their little boxes

Mini plastic pails from a $2 type shop for about 10 cents each - with special custom stickers using one of the images from the invitation paper I bought (the custom scanning, cropping & editing of the stickers was care of one of my clever friends!)

Me working hard decorating the big cake:

Goody Bags lined up with lots of fun treats:

 Decorations at my mum's house - aka Party Central (we had the party there as we were still building our house!!!)  The photo mobile idea I got from one of my first favourite blogs - she no longer blogs there due to a not very nice occurrence but her archives are worth a browse-  http://katiedid.squarespace.com/katie-did-journal/2008/9/14/showering-the-bride.html

Party Food!
Homemade Granita - My Sicilian Heritage Mr's speciality!

More mini cupcakes

Fruit Platter

The birthday cake! A la Australian Women's Weekly Birthday Cake Book - original edition - the same book all of my birthday cakes came from.

In addition to the kids goody bags & mini cupcake pails, I got some cardboard food boxes from Lomards and put a large version of the custom made Thank You sticker on them to fill with slices of birthday cake for the adults to take with them.

This was such a fun party to plan and a really fun party to have!  I'd spent a few weeks brainwashing teaching the birthday boy how the happy birthday, hip, hip hurray thing works and on the day he raised his arms and screamed "hurray" at the top of his lungs after everyone else had sung!  He was a crowd pleaser from the very early days!  I don't think my little bub will be quite the show off! He's a real cuddly mama's boy, so is more likely to shed a tear at all of the people singing at him! Fingers crossed he manages to enjoy his day.

The night after my first son's party, we tucked him in to bed and I was teary at the memories of 12 months earlier and the first time we met.  He changed our lives in an instant and it was lovely to celebrate his first birthday in such a lovely, big way.  Last year, for his 2nd birthday, I was stuck at home with a 3 week old baby, so we had a little playdate with 3 of his little friends (my friend's kids) which he was old enough to enjoy.  This year we will probably do a weekday playdate with some of his friends from playgroup & my friends kids who are the same age.  A 2 hour early lunch play.  No big crowd or weekend party with 50 people.  Nice and low key and easy to manage toddler who can be over-stimulated easy!

But before we get to toddler's 3rd birthday, I have a first birthday party to carryout for my darling little baby.  Fingers crossed it's a fun morning with everyone behaving themselves and getting along well!

Love Amy xoxo