Avery's 1st Birthday Party - A Year Later

With Avery's 2nd Birthday party this coming Saturday, I'm now realizing I never posted about her 1st birthday party. Better late than never, right? I've intended to write this post numerous times, but just never got around to doing it. So I'm changing that today. 

Avery's first birthday party was a "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star Theme". It was a lot of fun to plan and decorate for and also a little stressful. Planning a big party with 2 little ones taking up all your attention is hard. After this party, I told myself this was the last party I would stress over. I always try to out-do myself with every party. It just got to be too much and now I've really tried to scale it back as best I can and try to enjoy the party instead of stress over it. So this years party is low-key and at a park where the kids can run and play to their hearts content and hopefully the adults can sit back and watch and enjoy chatting with each other and catching up. The weather is supposed to be 77 and sunny. I couldn't ask for a more perfect day.

But back to last years party. We had the party in our church dining hall and I rented a bounce house for the kids to play in outside. Unfortunately, it rained that day. I kept hoping the rain would stop so I still had them set up the bounce house, much to Jake's dislike. It did stop raining... after the party was pretty much over. Oh well, many of the kids did get a chance to play and I think everyone still had a great time. Avery enjoyed her party very much and loved all the attention she got from all of our friends and family. She was adorable and had fun, so that's really all that matters. 

Party Details:

My mother in law made chicken salad wraps and turkey sandwiches for the adults and my mom and I made star shaped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the kids. It was a fun and yummy spread. My sister made Avery's smash cake and pink cupcakes and I made glittery star picks to decorate them with. They turned out so very cute! The colors of the party were pink, mint and gold. I made a majority of the decorations and bought a few as well. My mom put the centerpieces together and it all turned out so cute!

Everyone enjoyed their lunch, especially the birthday girl.

After eating lunch, we sang happy birthday to Avery and let her dig into her smash cake.

After she ate her cake, Grandma and I gave her a much needed bath in the church sink. :-)

After we got her all cleaned up, we let her open all of her presents!!

After opening all of the presents it had finally stopped raining. So we took Avery outside to play in the bounce house.

Going through these pictures again makes me realize just how much Avery has grown in a year. It's so hard to believe we'll be celebrating her second birthday this weekend. She's gotten so big and grown up so much in a year. It's hard to believe how quickly time flies.

Now off to finish up planning for her Peppa Pig Park Party! Hopefully I'm not a year late in sharing all about it here on the blog. ;-)