Birthday Fun!

Our baby girl turned 1 on March 29th! We celebrated with friends and family!  It was a great time planning and hosting!! I wish we had more reasons for celebrating - maybe we can make up some new ones!  Through all the excitement, it is still bitter sweet. To think that 1 year ago, I was holding the smallest most precious gift anyone could ever receive. And I grew her - for nine months I was the only one who could give her the care she needed. Now, after 12 months of having her to hold, I feel so blessed and happy and thankful. She is a healthy, beautiful toddler....There, I said it. My beautiful baby has grown up into a beautiful TODDLER!!
I do want to share some of the things my mom and I did to make Cambry's birthday such a wonderful celebration. First of all, that onesie and tutu are the doings of my mom (and Pinterest).

These are the party favors. I upcycled some empty baby food jars by spray painting the lids silver. I filled each jar with some small candies - jelly beans, M&Ms, skittles. Then added colored paper to make the the jar accents. These were a great success and super cheap!! The kiddos all loved them especially with a balloon tied around the top. They also were great table decorations! Way to multi-purpose!!!

 

This was by far one of my favorite creations! A lollipop tree accented with jelly beans!  I made this with a 4 inch styrofoam ball, a dowel rod, and 4 bags of Dum Dums. First, I created the lollipop of Dum Dums by taking cutting down all the Dum Dum sticks to about 1.5 inches. I started in 1 spot and filled in around it. Second, I glued a cylinder piece of styrofoam into the base and weighted the base down with marbles. To help secure the styrofoam, I put a few wash cloths between it and the bucket walls. This helped keep it from shifting as well as made a good seperation for the jelly beans. Finally, I stuck the lollipop tree into the styrofoam and added the small windmills I found for 99 cents at Hobby Lobby. It was a crowd pleaser after they realized they could eat it!!

Another favorite of mine was the cupcakes my mom and I made together. They were nothing fancy but worked really well and made everyone happy. We simply used boxed cake mix (it was too much for us to bake from scratch). We decorate them ourselves using the STAR tip for most of the decorating. It always gave us a fun, bright point.  The best part of the whole day was watching little miss dig into her cake (we used a pot pie aluminum pan to make hers). She loved digging in and getting dirty!! She is just too cute!!