Manny's 1st Birthday Party {Part 3}

So in case you missed it :), we celebrated Manny'2011/05/mannys-1st-birthday-party-part-1.html">here and here, and now it's time to finish up all this birthday party madness with one final post!

Manny was all business when it came smash cake time. I made the little topper with these free printables from The TomKat Studio. When she shared these back in October, I saved them knowing that it's exactly what I wanted to do for Manny's smash cake...so simple and fun!  I did it the same way Kim did that she mentions at the bottom of that post and it worked great. It was so windy outside that it was hard to get a great picture of it, but it turned out so cute.

You can see the topper better in this picture from his one year shoot with Jessica Meinardus Photography.

My best friend made Manny this adorable birthday crown! The details of it are amazing...thanks so much Candice...it is beyond adorable. :)


As I've mentioned before, my mom & Manny share a birthday! So I thought it'd be fun to make her a smash cake too. She showed a little more restraint with it than Manny did. :)

 And this is what happens when you decide he's had enough cake and take it away.  Poor little guy. :(

I wanted some boxers for Manny to eat his smash cake in, so I asked SheShe Made if they could make a pair with a sock monkey on the butt. They turned out so cute, along with his birthday outfit and bib! Thanks girls for all of the adorable stuff and letting me pick exactly what I wanted. :) The sock monkey on his boxers and jon jon were actually made from a sock used for decorations at one of his baby showers.

I also made a photo book (from Snapfish) with pictures from Manny's first year. I left white space throughout so the party guests could sign it.

My parents gave Manny this super cute toy box that my mom customized with Manny's name...we love it!

Manny loved the ridiculously huge balloon (I talked about it in my Week 20 Project 365 post, and it's actually tons smaller here as we'd had it for 5 days by this point!) so we had some fun taking pictures with it.

And just a few more pictures...Manny cruising around on his new car while enjoying a banana and some of the party guests.

Well, that about wraps it up! Sorry for the picture overload but it was really hard to choose. We had so much fun celebrating his first year and I just can't believe my baby is already one...what a perfect end to a perfect year! :)

Project 365: Week 19, 20, & 21

I really fell behind on Project 365, so here are the last 3 weeks worth!

May 7 - Now that Manny has been introduced to this style of cart, it's about all he wants to ride in. He gets so excited when we go to Target and he sees it. Unfortunately they're not always available so that always makes for a nice scene when I try to put him in the regular cart.
May 8 - I took more pictures of my new nephew Zeke this day!
May 9 - The weather finally warmed up, and Manny enjoyed walking around outside. Such a big shot!
May 10 - I had my nieces this week and we went to Chick-fil-a for lunch. They had so much fun playing on the playground.
May 11 - We had a pretty bad thunderstorm and ended up losing power for almost 6 hours. You know how fun that is when you have 3 kids you can't take outside because of the weather? Patrick got home about an hour after we lost power and the kids were running crazy...as you can see by the blur in this picture. We ended up going to Chick-fil-a (again) for dinner but unfortunately the power was still out when we got home. I felt like I was living back in the pioneer days, putting the kids to bed by candlelight.
May 12 - We took the kids to the bounce house and had a fun time!
May 13 - Olivia found Manny's old Wubbanub and decided she needed to use it. It's so funny because she's never taken a pacifier...maybe the arrival of her new baby brother has made her want one? :)

May 14 - Going out to eat with Manny is quite an adventure anymore. He kept flirting with this group of girls at the next table who were going to prom.
May 15 - Patrick got Manny dressed and decided to make him look a little dorky by pulling his socks all the way up. Manny was not a fan.
May 16 - I wanted a big balloon for Manny'2011/04/mannys-1st-birthday-invitations.html">invitations, but couldn't find anyone who would inflate it for me. So I went to the party store and asked if they had any big balloons, and they did. While they were airing it up, I walked around the store. I had NO clue how huge it would actually get. Patrick's eyes about popped out of his head when I walked out the door with it (he stayed in the car with Manny). It would not fit in the back end of our car, so it had to ride up front with Patrick. He officially decided I'm crazy and we couldn't stop laughing the whole way home. The balloon was so ridiculously huge I didn't even like the way it looked after all that.
May 17 - We had Manny'2011/05/one-year-pictures-by-jessica-meinardus.html">Jessica Meinardus Photography today. LOVE them! :)
May 18 - Patrick's brother and his family came to visit us for the week, and we went to Tulsa to do some shopping for the day. At the end of the day we went to Incredible Pizza. The kids (and us!) had a lot of fun - especially on the bumper cars!
May 19 - We did some more shopping and the boys were good sports. :)
May 20 - My sister texted me this picture of my niece Ellie on this day. Ellie had her end of the year program at school and she wanted to wear her crown the whole time...so stinking cute!

May 21 -I can't remember if I mentioned it or not, but we had Manny'2011/05/mannys-1st-birthday-party-part-1.html">first birthday party! :)
May 22 - Manny loves to help me unload the dishwasher. :)
May 23 - I had to take some paperwork by a business I'm working with. It was supposed to be a quick visit so I had Manny with me. We ended up having to wait a bit and next thing I know Manny had ripped the bell off the door...it's the blur in his hand. Lovely, Bam-Bam.
May 24 - In case you haven't realized by now, this kid is ALWAYS on the go. It's so hard to take pictures of him anymore...especially on my cell phone because there's a delay. I was trying to get him to stand still in this picture and he just kept laughing and running off. Such a mess!
May 25 - Manny loves turkey...he always gets excited when I give him some...he even started clapping in this picture.
May 26 - We took Manny for his first visit to the dentist. He was not a fan, as evidenced by the tear on his cheek. :(
May 27 - Manny was supposed to be taking a nap, but when I looked at the monitor I caught him reading a book. I guess his go-go-gadget arms reached the bookshelf!

Manny's 1st Birthday Party {Part 2}

Thank you SO much for all of the sweet comments and emails on part 1 of Manny's 1st Birthday Party! I'll admit I may have gone a little overboard, but I absolutely love planning parties and didn't realize how out of control it had gotten until I started setting up. Oh well, live and learn! :) Time for more pictures!

I wanted a way to document all of the guests at the party, and when I saw this idea via Young House Love I knew it's exactly what I was looking for!  All you do is take pictures of your guests with a blank piece of paper, then use an editing program (like Photoshop, or even Picnik would work) to add in their names. Then I'll print all of these pictures and put them in a little photo album for Manny so he can learn their faces & names.

We had a lot of fun with it, as well as the mustaches! :)

Sticking that tongue out...he's so goofy.

We tried to get a group shot of most of the kids there, but that was easier said than done. :)

Here are all of the boy cousins on my side of the family....such sweet boys!

And here are all of the kids on my side of the family...such a crazy & fun bunch! They are now "tied" at 5 boys, 5 girls. :)

 And my parents with all of their precious grandkids. :)

Well believe it or not, I still have more pictures - and I'm actually not even posting half of them! I'll post his smash cake and a few other pictures then I'll be done. Promise. Thanks for looking! :)

Manny's 1st Birthday Party {Part 1}

For Manny'2011/04/mannys-1st-birthday-invitations.html">invitations - it became more of a red and aqua theme with sock monkey accents. I think I was just burned out on the sock monkey stuff after having 2 sock monkey baby showers, and honestly it was just hard to come up with new ideas. So I decided to focus more on the colors, and I love how it turned out!

Since I have so many pictures, I'm going to divide this into two posts.  Let's start with the sweets table! As I mentioned, we had the party on our back veranda and it was SO windy, which made it hard to set up like I wanted. You might notice some differences in the pictures as we had to rearrange every once in awhile to accommodate the wind.

The backdrop curtains were $12 at IKEA, and I made the banner using my Cricut and then used rubber cement to glue the triangles into double fold bias tape. I made my cupcake toppers and wrappers myself, and used some free digital backdrop papers from Sprik Space. She always has great fun, free printables. The sock monkey clipart was purchased from Cupcake Cutiees Designs.


My sister-in-law Tracy led the way in all of the baking, and I am so thankful! Aside from the fact that I'm not exactly a baker, being sick all week left me with not much energy so I was lucky to have her help. She is so talented and I definitely couldn't have done this without her...thanks SO much Tracy!! :)

We had SO many yummy treats. Chocolate covered pretzels, Oreo dipped brownies, sugar cookies, devil's food cupcakes, chocolate covered mini bananas, kettle corn with peanut M&M's, and some other candy. I made some cute label tents for all of the food, but since it was so windy I wasn't able to set them out.

I saw sock monkey cake pops on etsy, but didn't want to pay $4 each for them! After searching around, I came across this tutorial on how to make your own. Let me tell you...these things were not easy and some of them came out a little...well, special looking. To save on time, we used a brownie pop silicone mold from Hobby Lobby. It's much faster than rolling individual cake balls, but as you can see the shape is much different and not exactly round. They were definitely the way to go for this project though. If you make these, I recommend (lots) of patience and an assembly line of people. :)

We also had these little "cake sandwiches". The concept came from this recipe for cupcake poppers, but when we saw a silicone pan at Hobby Lobby that had small squares we decided to use that rather than cut the tops off cupcakes. They were so yummy!

I saw these mustaches on a stick on Jill's blog, and thought they were so fun so we made some of them too. I purchased the molds from Bake it Pretty.

For drinks, we served red and aqua punch and bottled water with custom labels (tutorial found here).

 

I got the fun striped straws from Garnish using a Groupon I purchased...great deal! 

I made these party hat pics of Manny based on this idea here. I ran out of time and wasn't able to turn it into an actual banner so just taped them up individually...I love how they turned out. :)

For favors, I filled little pails with bubbles, bouncy balls, and other fun treats for the kiddos.


We also made this stand to display his monthly pictures - idea and tutorial via I Heart Naptime.

And of course the party wouldn't be complete without Maxx the Monkey, who has been the co-star in all of Manny's monthly photo shoots. :)

So yeah, I wasn't kidding when I said I had a lot of pictures. :) And there are still tons more to come! It really was a perfect day, and was a huge team effort to pull it off. My mom, dad, husband, sisters-in-law Tonya & Tracy, brother-in-law Joe, sister Rachael....seriously you guys are all the best. :) And as I'm typing out this list I could keep going because basically if you were at my house before the party, you were doing something to help. So thanks SO much to you all for pitching in and making this day so wonderful! It was the perfect way to celebrate Manny's first year.

Stay tuned for the rest of the party pics, and maybe even some free party printables! (updated to add: free printables can be found here)