A look back - Barrett's first birthday party

With the craziness at work that is always January for me and Tim, I never got a chance to write about Barrett's first birthday party.  So, much belatedly, here are the highlights of the first birthday party.

The theme was Winter One-derland and I used the colors turquoise and red.  I think it turned out pretty well!  With a December 23 birthday, it wasn't easy to come up with a date for the party, especially since all our family had to come in from out of town.  I didn't want to ask everyone to come in in December, with all the Christmas business, so we postponed it until New Year's Day, figuring that's usually a pretty quiet day for everyone.  Of course it meant Tim and I spent New Year's Eve taking down Christmas decor and hanging birthday garland, but oh well!

Food

I made potato soup in the slow-cooker, ham and cheese grilled sandwiches (recipe here), meatballs in the slow-cooker, a veggie plate and dip, cheese and crackers, bread and hummus and the below penguins and igloo dip. We also had a hot chocolate bar, which was absolutely awesome.  We got both regular and white hot chocolate from Dunkin Donuts and set up a topping bar with chopped andes mints, crushed peppermint, marshmallows and wafer cookies.   It was turned out to be a highlight of the party for the guests and absolutely delicious!

Aren't these adorable?  Our little army of penguins and their igloo.  The penguins are olives with carrot noses and feet and stuffed with cream cheese.  The igloo is  a blue cheese/cream cheese dip, decorated with a cream cheese exterior.

 The cake - half chocolate/half vanilla with strawberry filling and buttercream frosting.  Yum!

And the smash cake for Barrett

Decor

I made these snowflakes that we had hanging around the house.

 and here's a close up

The month-by-month banner I made of our little boy.  It really showed his growth each month.  This was taken after he got a hold of it and ripped of the bottom 2 pictures.  

 And the banner I made and a few of the generous gifts he received!  I was in love with this banner and we kept it up to celebrate his birthday for a month or so afterward!

I also made some garland out of red, light blue, white and turquoise felt circles and had this hanging with ribbon over the windows and doorway, but didn't get a picture.  You can kind of see it in the kitchen window in the background of some of the other photos. 


Here's my new one year-old. 

 And to show off his shirt a little more!  Notice the snowman in the shape of a "1"!

Unfortunately half way through the party Barrett started to get really flushed and cranky.  After not being much better the next day, we took him to the doctor and he was diagnosed with RSV. Fun!  It took a really long time for him to recover.  I was sad that he got sick during his own party.

sad and sick birthday boy

We ended up doing his cake a little later in the week, after he started to feel better. He hadn't really had any sugar before his birthday, so he wasn't quite sure what to think of it.

Trying to figure out what this thing is in front of him

Trying it and clearly liking it!

The beginning of the end.  We had to pull the rest of the cake away before he either ate or wore the entire thing.

So there you have it!  It took a lot of planning and he won't remember a moment of it, but we had fun and it was a great celebration of his first year of life!