As promised in my last post...here are pictures from baby A's 1st birthday party. My computer is PAINFULLY slow due to low memory on my hard drive because of all my pictures and videos. I'm currently working on backing up files to get them off my computer. But in the meantime, editing and organizing pics are also painfully slow....this is why it has been taking so long to get them posted.
It was a rainbow themed party. I was inspired by the cake, then found all of these cool ideas online, and wanted to try them all! I was a little too ambitious, so it wasn't stress free, but it all turned out really cute :)
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| Here I am the day before the party trying to get the house together...as you can see, I had a lot to do and it was a late night for me :( |
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| Our rainbow soda/juice bar |
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| Fruit tray...can you see the rainbow?? |
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| I've seen really cute pictures of rainbow parties with all different colors of plates and cups, but I did white plates, clear cups, and rainbow colored napkins and utensils, which turned out really cute (and was more budget friendly) |
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| The food spread. |
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| My dad and husband smoked some delicious ribs and we made some rotisserie chicken. It was all yummy! |
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| My mom makes the best wings! Didn't even get a chance to take a picture before they were all gone. |
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| Found some different colored glass bottles that I arranged into a little glass bottle rainbow. I originally wanted to put these on a long table, but with kids and table cloths, I think I could have ended up with a rainbow colored glass pile on my floor, so left them on the bathroom counter. |
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| Made some of this garland by running little pieces of paper through the sewing machine - a trick I learned from my crafty friend, Thao. So easy, and so cute! |
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| The birthday girl's brother...sporting an Amylou shirt |
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| A fun favor for both adults and kids. The Swedish fish went fast! |
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| Tower of cupcakes. I thought the kiddos would prefer cupcakes to cake. I ordered these from Sams super cheap, then added the rainbows. I originally wanted to pipe some white "clouds" for each side of the rainbows to sit on, but ran out of time |
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| My amazing husband putting the rainbows on the cupcakes because I was stressing out. |
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| cute! |
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| Rainbow Jell-O Shots for the adults. These were very yummy. I used "whipped" vodka...which tastes like whipped cream flavored vodka, and strawberry, lemon, and blueberry jell-o. Like most of the other stuff for the party...easy, but time consuming. |
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| My table skirt that I wouldn't do again if I had to do it all over. I thought it would be easy to make, but it was a big pain in the you know what. Turned out pretty cute though I guess... |
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| Saw similar birthday banners on Etsy and had to try to make one. LOVED the way it turned out! Loved the picture display of baby A on the mantle too. It was just so neat to see the age progression. These are newborn, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and 12 months. |
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| I'm ready for some cake, Mommy. |
The CAKE
Thought I would put the rainbow cake in its own section. It was my inspiration for the whole thing. It wasn't difficult to make...just time consuming. I even made baby A her own mini one...lucky little girl.
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| surprise! |
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| Pretty colors! I just added food coloring to the cake batter. Not exactly natural and organic, but fun and pretty! And ok for 1 day out of the year :) |
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| I only have 2 pans...so could only bake 2 colors at a time. I have been blessed with a double oven, so one oven had the big cake pans, and the other had the mini pans for the mini cake. If I didn't have the double oven, baby A would not have had her own mini-rainbow cake... |
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| The hardest part was making sure everything was level so it wouldn't topple over. |
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| At one point, her cake ended up on the floor. |
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| Yes, this really did happen. |
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| clean up, clean up, everybody, everywhere |
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| The cake finally did topple over... |
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| The lighting was so bad in my house that day. I actually waited till the next morning to take this picture. Baby girl did some damage to that cake! |
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| I foresee birthday hats in the future of Amylou... |
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| Messy shirt |
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| All clean! |
Here are all the links that inspired me:
Rainbow Fruit Tray
Rainbow Cake (hers looks so much better than mine!)
Another awesome rainbow cake
Table skirt
Jello Shots
Cupcakes
Ok, as I look at these pages again...they ALL look so much better than mine! Oh well, I had fun :)
