A Birthday Fit for a Princess

To party or not to party?

... was the question about a month ago. We were trying to decide whether to throw Laura a small get-together with just family on her actual birthday, or a bigger birthday party on the weekend... After much deliberating on the subject, we decided in the end to go with the all-out party, even though it was a lot of work, and she wouldn't remember it, and it was only for the parents, etc etc. I felt it was a big milestone and deserved a worthy celebration. Besides, I had fun planning it all, and it was worth it (though it was a lot of work). 

     Since Laura is too young to choose her own theme for her birthday, I snapped up the opportunity to have the mandatory princess party. 

Over-used theme? Yes. 

Still cute? In my possibly biased opinion, I think so. 

  
     While Laura was still in the first half of her first year I had already recruited Grandma to make her a princess dress for her birthday (this party was obviously a long time coming!). We had even picked out and bought the fabric for it. I googled pictures of princess dresses I wanted to model it after:
     

Picking and choosing elements from all three, this was the finished product: 

Adorable, if I do say so myself. :)

       I also googled images of castle cakes for inspiration, and this was the end product. Not exactly what I had originally pictured, but close enough. 

(And after probably five hours of cake-making, I really didn't even care anymore.)

     I had some gold curling ribbon that came as part of a Christmas set along with green, red, and white. I'm pretty sure it came from the dollar store, and therefore was at most 

25 cents worth. However, instead of just getting rid of it, I felt the need to put it to good use by spending $10 on balloons and $23 on a tank of helium. 

But then again, who doesn't love helium balloons (besides Chester)?

It still ended up being cheaper than having the balloons done for us anyway, 

and we didn't have to transport them.

 I wasn't going to go too heavy on many other decorations until a friend of mine who wouldn't be able to attend said she was "really looking forward to the pictures", which obviously ramped up the pressure to have awesome photos ;). And so I made this:

(and recruited Laura's uncle to blow up all the leftover balloons)
I also wanted to have something fun for the little kids to play with
since we weren't having planned activities.

On my birth board on BabyCenter there had been much talk about birthdays for months, and one helpful tidbit I picked up was that, in reality, people don't like loot bags. They're usually full of random dollar store junk that is fun for 30 seconds and then spends the rest of it's lifetime cluttering up your house until it finally finds its way to the trash. So one suggestion I thought was fun was to give $5 gift cards instead, since people are much more likely to like/ use that. I wanted to give them in a fun & creative way, so I ended up making wands for the birthday princesses out of Rice Krispie squares to attach them to:

      

and displayed them in a vase on the table like this:

We created a Laura shrine with all her monthly Chester photos above the food table:

The menu was mostly decided by choosing Laura's favourite foods:
meatballs, mango & avocado dip, cheese, etc. 

And here are the drinks (and photographic proof of Josh helping!):

Shirley Temple punch

And a few more random photos for a good measure:

Princess Cake Monster!

Hope you had a wonderful first birthday, Not-So-Baby Girl! ♥

I would also like to give special thanks to Laura's other grandma for all the help cleaning :), and also to our brave guests for battling the less-than-ideal road conditions to join us!