Joyfully Prudent

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1st Birthday Party for Maddox – You Are My Sunshine Theme

Last Sunday we had a great time celebrating Maddox’s 1st birthday!  I’ve known I was going to do this theme for quite some time now.  Since Maddox was a baby I would sing “You Are My Sunshine” to him after he got out of the bathtub.  He would lay his head on my shoulder and listen to me for what seemed like 10 minutes.  It became our thing…a special moment that melted my heart every time. 

A few months ago, I was thinking about what theme we would do for his part and I instantly thought a “Sunshine” party would be perfect since he was born in June.  Coupled with “our song,” and we had a theme!

Here is one of our moments!

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May is a super busy time for me with my Etsy shop, so I decided to just order a printable party package from another Etsy seller to go ahead and get the invites out.  Plus, it was super cute and the work was already done for me.  This was hard for me since this is essentially what I do, but it really was worth it.  Here was the invite from Forever Your Prints (obviously with our info).  This is from her website.

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We decided not to do actual gifts since he already has so many toys because of Beckham.  We are needing to get him a car seat though.  I totally stole this idea from one of my best friends and made this cute saying to go with the invite.  I was super worried about sending this out, but knew the people coming were close friends and family…people most likely to get him something even if we said don’t.

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Now that the invites were out, next up was the party!  I knew I wanted to “man” up this theme with touches of turquoise.  It was pretty simple to plan…just needed a lot of yellow, gray, white, and turquoise.  I already had a sign I made a while back and I knew I wanted to do BBQ since it was a summer party. 

I focus on 3 areas for decorations…the dining room (where most of food is), the fireplace, and the breakfast table (where either desserts or drinks are).  This year we had a new buffet table in our dining room so I made that the dessert table and the breakfast table in the kitchen had all the drinks on it.  I wanted that close to the back door since I knew people would be grabbing for drinks while outside.

Right when you walked in, you see the dining room.  This is where all the food was.  And let me just say streamers are one of the best ways to decorate for cheap!  I just threw them over the curtain rod.
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I filled each of those cups with potato salad, but we didn’t get a pic of that.  Same with the coleslaw.  I wanted everything ready to go since I knew most adults would be parents who had their hands full.  We catered the BBQ from Rudy’s…brisket and turkey for people to make sandwiches.  There was also some chips and watermelon.

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Since BBQ isn’t usually a kid’s pick, I decided to make little sacks with kid friendly food for them to have.  I also wanted to make that easy to grab and take wherever they were going to eat.  It ended up working out great and will always do this from now on.  Inside each bag was a PBJ Uncrustable, a bag of chips, and a baggie of cheese and grapes.  We had juice boxes in a cooler as well for the kiddos (and water).

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This was adjacent to the dining room table and the first thing you see when you open the front door.  This is where all the desserts were.  I also had Maddox’s monthly photos on suns.  And one of the photos from his cake smash pictures set out on the table next to his cake.
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My friend Emily made that adorable cake.  It was perfect.  I wanted simple, but cute.  The sun and the 1 were perfect.  The only hiccup we had was that our “well behaved” 3 year old snapped the top off that 1 and ate it BEFORE we sang Happy Birthday and let Maddox “smash” it.  I was so stinking mad, but at least we got a cute picture of it before he ripped it off.  Note to self: Cover cake or put it away as to not tempt children.

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Emily also made those cookies.  Do those not just make you so happy?!  Those suns!!!  Perfect!  I also made Oreo balls and dipped them in white chocolate and added some yellow sprinkles on top. 

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These were the “cupcakes” we served.  Little bundtinis from Nothing Bundt Cakes.  We served White Chocolate Raspberry, Chocolate Chocolate Chip, and Swirl.

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I don’t play when it comes to desserts. 🙂

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This was the fireplace.  I always try to keep this simple with a banner and maybe something on top.  I got that 16×20 photo for free on Shutterfly (their promotion this month) and I of course created one of my chalkboard birthday posters.  I usually make these as 16×20’s, but for some reason the guy who printed it, printed this weird 29×34 (or something like that), which I ended up really liking.  And I added a simple banner with some leftover gold letters I had.  Square banners are the easiest to make and I honestly like them better.

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This was the Drink station by the back door.  We had Beeritas in that jar, lemonade in the mason jars, and water &juice below the table in coolers.

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I LOVED what I ended up doing with the lemonade.  I filled some mason jars with Crystal Light lemonade, added 2 lemon slices to each one, and jarred them up.  The sign said “Just add some ice” (that’s why there is a little room inside).  I didn’t want to water them down before guests took a jar.  Forgot to take those labels off on top before we snapped the picture 🙂  Which by the way were so cool.  They were chalkboard labels that the guests can write their name on using their fingernail (or anything sharp).

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We have a “buffet table” (it’s really just an old dresser) by our front door.  I use this as the favor table so guests can grab a favor on the way out. 

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We went with my favorite favors to make and give.  Gourmet flavored popcorn.  We have the best popcorn shop downtown and I bought banana and blue raspberry.  I wanted the popcorn to coordinate with the theme (yellow and turquoise).  I simply bought a large bag of popcorn and filled plastic favor bags with a heaping cup of popcorn.  Each tag said “Thanks for making my birthday Brighter.”  Those were also from Forever Your Prints on Etsy.

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I had a few bubbles for the kids to take as well (the popcorn was for both kids and adults).  These were less than a $1.00 each at Walmart.

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And I had this sign out for décor on the table as well.

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I was so busy hosting and mingling that I didn’t snap any pictures, but Ryan managed to snap a few of the guests towards the end of the party.  The kids played outside on our bounce house, in the sandbox, on the swing set and indoors in the playroom. 

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Maddox started walking about a week ago, which made it that much more fun for him to enjoy his party.  He enjoyed his cake.  He neatly picked at it and eventually got a little on his face (neat kid…you know I love that).  Note: We did dress him for his party in a cute yellow shirt, but I have not one picture of that.
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This is what he did when we took it away.

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He opened a couple of presents that came anyway and enjoyed the attention.

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We had such a great time and are truly blessed to have friends and family to celebrate our sweet baby boy with! 

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This was a fun theme to plan a party for. And surprisingly easy to clean up from.  My house is back to normal and CLEAN!  Now we’re off to buy a new car seat thanks to our friends and family.  We’re seriously so thankful!
Thank you Logan for taking pictures of the decorations at the party!
I love connecting with y’all.  My Facebook, Instagram(@snyderstellall) and Pinterest.  Come say hi!

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Comments

  2. 2

    What an awesome party!! I was cracking up over the story of the "stolen" top of the '1' on the cake! Hahaha!!!
    Do you have any tutorials on here for how you create your banners?
    The decor looked awesome, I love the theme, and those desserts look absolutely to die for! 🙂

    Reply

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