Photos: Sam's 1st Birthday Party

Soooo.... THREE months later, I'm finally getting Sam's 1st Birthday Bash pics up!  It's been fun reliving it today going through these photos.  We had such a great day and best of all, Sam had a blast too.  I chose the winter wonderland / arctic theme way back.... like when the kid could barely hold his head up.  It was a fun and easy theme to go with, especially being able to incorporate lots of Christmas decorations that worked with our colors.  We used pool blue, turquoise, white, and silver with pops of red.  Very gender neutral, but you could swap out the red for pink and it's suddenly very girly.  Already brainstorming on possibilities for a twin 1st birthday party... I may need an intervention! 

Anyway, enjoy the pics!


Sam's cake table coming together (was still putting stuff out at this point).

Tissue pom poms... so cheap and easy, but very time consuming!  Thanks to Aunt Jenn for helping me with those.

Favors for the kids... I had these frosted boxes in my stash from years ago.  And Sam's smash cake!

Main food table... kudos to my "catering" buddy, Costco.

One of my favorite things... the Hot Cocoa bar with homemade cocoa mix and fun toppings!  Plus supplies for guests to bag up some mix to enjoy at home (because I don't need 5 lbs of hot cocoa).

Drink tubs and snacks for kids.

Blueberry Mimosa station (pitcher not out yet) - these were a big hit!  2 parts champagne, 1 part OJ, 1 part 100% blueberry juice (kinda hard to find).  Top with a few fresh or frozen blueberries.  Delish!

Mantle decorated for the party.  Hard to see but the large vases are filled with ginormous marshmallows and hard candies.  The two pics were the same shot of Sam at 7 days and 12 mos.  What a difference a year makes!

We kept our Christmas tree up for the party but stripped it of our usual decorations and redid it with blue lights and tinsel.  Hard to see in the pic.. the blue lights don't show up so well.  Also had a slideshow playing of Sam's pics during the party - my dad put it together and spent MANY hours on it!  So sweet...

We had several displays of the monthly photos we had taken of Sam during his 1st year.  In this pose, we had him wear the same sleeper (size 12mo) and watched him grow into it from month to month.

One of Sam's buddies enjoying the sweets!  My "snow-covered" strawberries were a hit.  So easy too... use whatever colored candy melts for dipping, then roll in coconut to create the "snow" look.

Smash cake time!  And a closer look at the main cake too... courtesy of Publix!  I got the "S" topper from Michael's and added glitter to it.  I was looking everywhere for a cool "1" topper and never found one I liked.

"Hey, Mom, have you tried this?!?!"

"OK, Coach, quick water break then I'm going back in..."

Sam and Dada!

Gran and Sam

Present-palooza!

Can't imagine what was going through his little head!

Cool overhead shot of the gift craziness...

Also as promised (months ago!), here are some shots of the recently finished playroom.  The fabulous curtain panels were sewn by my sweet bestest!

We did an Eric Carle theme with the prints and fabrics.  The leaves on the tree were cut from those borders that teachers use and slapped on the wall with Yes Glue.  I painted the tree base by hand, just free-style, using Martha Stewart metallics from Home Depot.  Y'all know I love me some metallic paint!

My favorite part of the room... the chalkboard wall!  Party guests left their wishes for Sam...

And ALL that will wear a little boy out....