First Birthday

My baby is one. It feels like she should be already three, but at the same time, it feels like we were just in the hospital and brought her home. She was only 2-months-old when we moved to California, and I have to say that I do not remember very much about her first two months of life. Life was so busy, and everything was very emotional. A lot of changes and adjustments have happened during the last 12 months. However, I am happy to report that she is healthy and happy and such a fun addition to our family.

Matilda is not walking yet, but she is an expert on climbing. She climbs on anything. The other day, I found her sitting inside a basket, and I have no idea how she got inside. My guess is that she climbed on her stroller and then rolled into the basket. There were no cries and no complaints. She was just happily sitting in the basket proud of herself for getting in there. It will remain a mystery.

She already has many opinions, and she is not afraid to share them. I have tried to teach her some baby signs, but she refuses to use them. One day, my sister-in-law and I witnessed her sitting on her hands when we tried to get her to sign "all done."  Little stinker.

She has likes and dislikes. She prefers shredded cheese over sliced cheese. She likes her water from sippy cup and only drinks milk from a regular cup when I hold it to her mouth.

The most fun part of her being one is that she understands stuff. For example, if I say, "Matilda. Go find the Tails book (her favorite book at the moment)." She crawls over where the books are and finds it in the pile of books. Then she crawls back to sit on my lap and waits for me to read it for her. She giggles with delight. And, then we read it over and over and over again.

Two weeks ago we had a birthday party to celebrate one-year-old Matilda. The theme was hot air balloons. As always, Pinterest was my source of inspiration. I had also seen my friend's son's preschool use hot air balloon theme for their book fair in the fall. It was so pretty that I was sold.

I like paper invitations. It is fun to stuff the envelopes, write addresses, stick stamps on the envelopes, and put them in the mailbox. I was going to order invitations from Etsy or Zazzle, but then decided that I could easily make them myself. So, I did. I used a hot air balloon cookie cutter as my template for the balloons on the cards, and drew and cut the clouds myself.

I had fun making all the decorations for the party. I sewed fabric letters in rainbow colors to spell "Happy Birthday" and "Matilda is one." I also sewed table runners and fabric garlands to hang. 

But, the most excited and proud I am of all the hot air balloons that I made. I spent hours on gluing paper circles to rice paper lanterns with a hot glue gun. I had never really used a hot glue gun before, and I have to admit, I am a huge fan now. It was so much fun!! I made five hot air balloons that were covered with paper circles - yellow, pink, blue, green and rainbow colored one. The other hot air balloons were colored lanterns. The baskets are brown colored berry baskets that I had bought from Michaels during Valentine's Day thinking that maybe some day I would use them. I used an eraser at the end of a pencil and sparkly gold paint to make dots on the baskets.

The clouds are made from the paper lanterns as well. We (I designated some of the clouds for my father-in-law to finish) glued fiberfill onto the lanterns. It was messy, but the end result was stunning. I got this idea from Pinterest. Someone had used bunch of these clouds as a backdrop for a wedding photo shoot. Such a great idea!

I tried to think of foods that were birthday girl safe and related somehow to our theme of hot air balloons, clouds and rainbows. We had a bucket of "birthday girl recommendations" -- apple sauce, string cheese and graham crackers. We also had little cheese and cucumber sandwich bites, Pirates Booty as clouds, three different salads, and rainbow fruit skewers.

For dessert, we got a chocolate cake from Costco, and I made some Finnish donut holes. Yum! The cake and the cake topper idea came from Craftaholics Anonymous blog. She actually made me realize that not everything needed to be done by me. I could take some shortcuts with food. She had lots of beautiful ideas, and my favorite one was the cake with the little hot air balloons.

I also made some little table decorations. The hot air balloons are made from paper with toothpicks and the clouds are made with styrofoam. I painted them twice with white paint and then added some sparkles.

I had decided that this party was going to be very low key. We had a time frame that we were going to be at the location, and people could stop by any time they wanted and stay as long as they wanted. I also did not want to make lots of plans to entertain the kids. No games. No big deal activities. It was 1-year-old's party. I wanted to keep it simple.

We had a hot air balloon "ride." We had all of our trains set up on the floor. I also chose some of Matilda's favorite books and books related to our theme and put them on the table for the kids to read. Outside, we had set up a bubble table for the kids. They seemed to enjoy that a lot.

 

I wanted to have a craft, so I came up with an idea for the kids to paint their own hot air balloons. I bought small styrofoam balls to be the balloons and white paper cups for baskets. I used bamboo skewers to hold the balls up. My awesome friend (Thank you, Katy!!) hot glued all the hot air balloons together before the party, so when the kids showed up, they could just focus on painting and decorating. We had some sparkly diamond like stickers (Kiitos, Johanna!!) that were used to decorate the baskets. I wish I had pictures of the finished hot air balloons. They came out really nice.

I struggle with the goody bags for parties. When I was a kid, we did not get goody bags for going to someone else's birthday party. I find it odd that you would go to celebrate someone else's day, and you leave with a bag of goodies. You get to eat cake, cookies, ice cream, play games with your friends, and have a wonderful time, and then you also need a bag with goodies. Sigh! I just don't get it. However, I could not have anything for the party goers, so I decided to get a book for each family with kids who came. The book was "Curious George and the Hot Air Balloon." How perfect is that!! Inside the book, I placed a sticker that reminds the readers where they got the book from. Each party goer also got a candy tube of M&Ms.

I had a lot of fun preparing for this party. I cannot wait to start thinking about Olivia's party which luckily is in 6 months. I timed my children's birthdays perfectly...every 6 months there is a party. Yippeee!!