1st Birthday Party

I started writing this post the Sunday after Asher's party.  I wrote most of it and just have not had time to finish and post yet, mostly because there are so many pictures that I want to include and SO SO many of them to go through.....Now that its almost 2 weeks past his party, Ive decided to just get it done.   I'm going to fill in my text with pictures and I apologize now that none of them are edited and I apologize for the mass number that I am including, but its easier than having to choose.
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Weeks and weeks of prep and planning and just like that, its over!  We had Asher's first birthday party on Saturday and it was a huge success.  I have been planning and prepping and shopping and cooking and searching and thinking and planning and crafting for what feels like weeks now.  It was fun to have a project and even more fun to see it all come to life pretty much exactly as I anticipated.

I went back and forth trying to decide if I even wanted to have a big party, or just keep it a small family intimate thing.  We decided to have a party, largely (and selfishly) in part because I saw so many cute ideas on pinterest that I wanted to try out, and I was afraid I would regret it after the fact if I did not have one.  We knew that if we were going to have a party the theme had to be dogs...we decided that back in January when we were in Aruba.  I sat down to design his invitations in photoshop one night and from there evolved the polka dots and color scheme.

Once the invitations were out and I had a color scheme I started shopping and crafting and baking.  For the last month Nick and I have had baking date nights, I had a couple of recipes I wanted to try out, and I wanted to get lots of practice at making and decorating cakes!  Traditional arts and crafts fell to the wayside and I found myself buying icing bags and tips at the craft store and focusing on the cake more than anything else. At one point I think that we had about 4 pounds of butter-cream icing in our refrigerator...and I still had to make more.  For the party I made two cakes and a ton of cupcakes.  1 cake for Asher to smash, and then a larger version for the adults.  I was pretty pleased with the way they came out.  And if it were not so fattening, I think that I would make more cakes because the decorating part is a lot of fun!!

Next came the decor.  I knew that I wanted to have a bunch of photos from Asher's first year.  The hard part was weeding through the 3500+ photos that we have taken in the past year.  I narrowed it down to about 50, played around with the color treatments and different actions in light-room, and then printed them all.  Once they were printed,  I narrowed the selection down to about thirty, which I then backed on paper to hang at the party.  To see all the color treated photos click here.  I also backed his month by month photos on paper and displayed those on the fridge.  (and now thanks to all these printed photos we finally, a year later, have framed photos of our baby in the house)

Once all the pictures were complete, everything else sort of fell into place.  The food (although minimal) added color and doubled as decor, thanks to pinterest for most of the inspiration.  A dozen or so balloons, a bunch of tissue paper puffs both big and small (thanks Sister and Whitney for the help), a dot garland and hand made party hats (borrowed from Betsy), doggie bags in place of goody bags and of course the Birthday Boy's Throne.

Homemade and Iced Dog Bone Cookies that look like wrenches....

Now that everything was set up and ready to go (extra special thanks to Whitney for helping me out the night before) we were ready to celebrate!  I was a bit apprehensive to see how Asher would act since it was an unfamiliar place and since there would be so many people around.  He started off a little clingy to the immediate family, but lucky for us, that allowed for some good photo opps!

 

Aunt Robin was so busy taking pictures, she didn't get any with the birthday boy

As the party progressed, he far surpassed every expectation I had of him.  Asher was a PERFECT baby ALL day at the party.  Not the first whine, squeal, tantrum, fussy moment, even after everyone left and it was already an hour past his nap time he sat there like a perfect little boy (watching the ipad) while we cleaned up.  We were so proud to have such a well behaved boy.  At the last minute we decided to bring his walker, and I am so glad that we did.  As time went on, Asher didnt want to be held and just went straight to his walker to walk around his party and mingle with all of his guests.

After a while, we set Asher up at his birthday throne and brought him his cake.  We have seen numerous one year olds meltdown with the roar of everyone singing happy birthday, so we decided against the group sing along.  Typically, when Asher eats, the food ends up everywhere; on the highchair, on the floor, all over his hands, clothes, face and hair.  We put the cake on his tray and expected him to dig right in, but he surprised us all with his dainty and polite way of pawing at his cake.  Eventually he dug in a little bit more...but never even got messy enough for me to put him in his second outfit that I brought. 

He never uses a fork at home, but for some reason thought that he would give it a go on his birthday!

Asher had quite the crowd watching as he dug into his cake!

After about a half hour of having the cake to himself, he decided to share a little with Mommy and Poppy.  I am still just amazed that he did not get himself covered in icing.

After about a half hour of eating cake and icing, he was ready to play with his buddies and open some of his presents.  We didnt get to open all of them before he lost interest but I think all the kiddos had fun none the less!

My sweet boy giving me a hug and thanking me for his great birthday party!

Thank you so much for everyone who came to Asher's birthday party, we had an amazing memorable time and so happy that you could all celebrate with us. Asher is having a great time at home with all of his new toys too!  Of course there was no shortage of pictures taken and this post just highlights a handful of them (a big handful...i know), and I had a difficult time choosing because there are so many . If you want to skim through all the photos you can view that album here.

Post Birthday Party

When we got home, Asher immediately went down for his nap (much to my surprise after eating half a cake).  He ate a good dinner and our afternoon/evening progressed as any other night. He went to sleep without a problem too.  But about 2-3 hours later someone was wide awake and ready to go.  He walked back and forth in his crib for a good half hour before I finally went into his room to help him back to sleep.  It took a good hour before  I could get him to fall asleep. I could tell that he was tired, but that his body just didnt know how to metabolize all that sugar.  He laid limp in my arm but his eyes were WIDE open, and any time they started to close, they would pop back open.  Once he finally passed out, I just held him close and rocked and rocked and rocked with my little birthday boy, before laying him in his crib and crawling into bed myself.