Max's big top (first) birthday!

On June 23, 2012 our baby boy turned ONE!  Whether I was looking for a good excuse to throw a neighborhood party, or whether I was feeling sentimental that this would likely be the last one-year-old birthday bash that I would throw for one of my own kiddos (maybe a bit of both?)…I decided to have fun going all out with a fun, vintage circus/carnival themed party!  Lucky for me I had friends and family that were willing to step in and help with all sorts of stuff – so let’s recap the festivities!   

First I found some awesome invitations to set the theme of our event.  I bought the digital file from Sassaby (where I also purchased matching accessories to print and assemble for the party).  Once I got the file I just had to edit, print, cut and paste.  Here's how the invite turned out:

 And the envelopes:

Upon arriving at the party guests were directed which side yard to head down toward the backyard.

My sweet friend Natalie greeted guests at our little sign in table where I had created a book for people to leave a message for Max, pick up their game cards and a party hat, and hopefully take a picture in our photo booth!

 

I ordered some (Michael Miller) polka dot fabric that I loved for the photo booth, but wasn’t sure how I was going to hang it as a backdrop, so when Natalie offered her husband Brad to mastermind a photo booth, I was happy to hand it over to them.  Brad completely designed and built the booth, and Natalie sewed the panels together to add to the frame.  I absolutely LOVE the way it turned out and am so grateful for them doing it!  Thanks, guys!  

 

Natalie also photographed the willing participants with props like clown noses and the darling mustaches or lips that I ordered from Wisker Works.

 

I love how the photo booth pictures turned out!  I wish that we could have conned every guest into stepping into our photo booth, but here are the pictures of everyone who was willing to participate!  Starting with my family...

(Ok...so perhaps Lincoln wasn't so willing to participate)

I'm so grateful for such a cheerful and willing friend to greet our guests and run the photo booth for me so I could scramble around with all the last minute things I was still doing while people arrived.  Thanks, Nat!  And I'm also so glad that so many neighbors and friends came to support our little event - it wouldn't have been fun without you there, so thanks for coming!

 

 

 

Moving on to the happenings at the party…first, we had a bounce house for the kiddos:

 

 

 

A shot (bounce house behind us) as you enter our backyard...

This was the snow cone and cotton candy table!

My wonderful MIL happily agreed to run the snow cone machine...

 And my sweet neighbor Michelle stepped in and offered to run this bad boy (cotton candy machine)...

Now on to the treat table!

 

Now a couple photos with the smash cake put out.  I got the idea for the tiny pom garland cake topper from Kara's Party Ideas and was excited to try make it since it matched my other decorations so perfectly.  It was easy and fun to make!

We air popped (and buttered/salted) fresh popcorn and put it in cute little striped boxes, but it somehow didn't make its way out to the treat table (I brought it out on a tray toward the end of the party once I remembered it)...so just envision it on the table!


I was happy to see the kids anxious to dig into the treats.  That's the point, right?!

You can't see what's in the mason jars, but it was fresh squeezed lemonade. Mark squeezed the Arizona lemons himself and made it into lemonade (with fresh lemon slices)!...until we ran out at which point we used country time :)

Naturally we offered water too on a hot summer day...and I got these adorable paper straws through a great deal on Pick Your Plum.

I made a ton of my own pom-poms and strung them together to make decorative garlands.  I ordered the clover pom maker to help me (so I could set it down and come back to it) off of amazon.  Luckily we took a road trip to Disneyland because I made pom-poms the whole way there and the whole way back in order to get these puppies done!

You can see below how the pom garlands were hung around the perimeter of the food tent that didn't have shade panels down.  We didn't have food out on the blue table here yet, but we served hot dogs (in foil hot dog bags ordered from a restaurant supply company), chips, watermelon, and if I hadn't forgotten to put it out we would have had tons of fresh veggies and dip (oops)!  Oh, and as for these table cloths...fabric was purchased at various stores and I hemmed them with no-sew Heat 'n' Bond (and then put table covering clips on them since it was so windy)!

I caved under pressure of the time crunch and didn't make my own tissue poms...I ordered them on etsy from Sweet and Savvy Designs.  They were just the colors and sized that I wanted, and I'm sooo grateful for my mom and Natalie fluffing them all right before the party (it takes a while) so we could get them hung.  How do I always run out of time when setting up parties?...You'd think I could figure that out!

As was the case with several other things...I didn't get all of the decorations for this table set out.  I had more pictures in frames to put out for guests to look at from Max's first year, but at least there was this little tribute/conversation piece...

And speaking of the birthday boy, here he is!  I could smooch those cheeks all day...

Poor little guy has seasonal allergies, but he held up pretty well...

Our little birthday boy with his daddy:

 Me.

I was quite pleased with how the mini-tophat (on a headband) turned out that I made (supplies purchased at Hobby Lobby - including the top hat from the doll section).

This is me trying to draw a mustache on our little ringmaster.  And I should mention that Max's cute little tux-onsie was purchased on etsy from LilTuxes.

 He wasn't too happy after the whole mustache thing...

 ...but he recovered quickly

Noah was much more cheerful about his mustache...

 Now on to games!  I downloaded a cute circus font and made little cards that listed each of the game stations.  Once each game was completed the person manning that station would punch the guest's card.  After each game had a punch the cards were turned in to me and we drew a winner of the fun gift basket that was on the welcome table!  Here's little Lauren with her game card...

My father-in-law manned the Fishbowl Game!  I had colored ping pong balls that were tossed into fishbowls (bought at local dollar stores) that we filled with water and put little plastic fish in them.

My dad manned the  "Knock Over the Cans" game.  To make the cans I saved a bunch of Gerber baby puffs containers, filled them with beans and glued them shut.  Then I used a 2" punch to cut circles of striped paper to glue on the top of the can for decoration.  Viola!

My dad learned that holding up some fabric behind the contestant was an effective way to not have to chase the ball down in our neighbor's yard...

My wonderful mom (who also helped with a ton of party preparations) manned the Hula Hoop Toss - which was to toss a hula hoop over a helium balloon bobbing in the wind.  It also doubled as an area for the kids to just enjoy hula hooping of course!

My sweet friend Sydnie manned the beanbag toss!  We bought butcher paper (and the beanbags) when we were at Zurchers and Mark made this cool beanbag toss game from an old box we had on hand.  I loved how the beanbags that go into a hole dropped right down into an area you could retrieve them from.  Well done, honey!

Of course there was also plenty of time to just eat, drink, and visit.

Alex and Isaac

 

I think that Isaac liked the watermelon...

 

My adorable Lincoln enjoying his lemonade...

My sweet Noah

Grandpa Mont with Max and his cousin Ava

Trey

 

Maddix

Charlee

Tristan and Bethany

Jenny

Jackson

 Gabe

Sammy

Charlie

Lilia

Tyler

Garrett (and Crew) with my brother Chris - who was otherwise behind the camera.  Garrett's family lives 2 houses up from us and he and Chris have been friends since they were kids.  Small world.  Anyway - a big, HUGE thank you to Chris for all these awesome pictures.  Love you, little brother! :)

Madison

 

My youngest brother Josh

Garrett G, Scott, Garret M. and Cam

My dad (aka Grandpa Rob)

Right on our street there are 5 little boys that are all consecutively 1 month apart from each other.  Isaac is missing in this picture, but he is 14 months.  Left to right we have Crew (11 months), Trey (13 months), Max (12 months), and Sawyer (10 months).

Crew

Trey

Sawyer

Max

Max (with Michelle) trying lemonade for the first time...

 ...forget the straw

Max and Mommy

You know it's past time to sing happy birthday when the cupcakes are disappearing!

So, we put the birthday boy in this adorable yellow highchair (courtesy of the Gross family!)...

Singing Happy Birthday to Max

Blowing out his candle...

Here are a two video clips of the singing, and Max trying his first cake:

I love how the kids gravitated over to watch Max destroy and consume his cake...

Notice the cake literally flying in the next couple of shots...they don't call it a "smash cake" for nothing!

Since Max's favorite food is bananas right now, the cake was banana flavored...with chunks of real banana in it.  I think he liked it...

 Off to the bath with you...

 Yes, we washed the high chair down before returning it...

A freshly bathed birthday boy with his Grandma (my mom)

Birthday boy with Grandpa (my dad)

There are a few random things that I have to include for myself...like these shots we took of leftover cupcakes.  While cleaning realized several party items that never made it outside including some decorations, some food, sacks for the candy, and even the cupcake toppers that I made.  So! I stuck a few in some cupcakes to at least get a quick picture *sigh*

Lastly, these pictures do no justice to the disaster that my house was after the party, but I just have to include a couple quick shots that we took while bringing everything in and cleaning up...

A really HUGE thank you not only to everyone that came, but also to those people who stuck around and helped put a big dent in the after party clean up!  Sign me up for clean-up duty at your next party for sure!

We didn't open gifts during the party, so the day after the party I put Max's little birthday tuxedo back on and we stuck a blanket and balloons in the back yard and he opened his gifts.

And right in the middle of things Max decided to stand up all on his own for the very first time...and I got this picture of it!

Look how proud Max looks with himself...

Trying that standing thing all by himself again...

 

We love you so much, Max.

And since this post isn't long enough...I thought that I'd include Max's one year stats and some basic info about Max at this stage (since this is MY journal after all):

Length 31.89" (96%)

Weight 25 lbs 13.5 oz. (93%)

Head Circumference 49.7 cm (99%)

• Max is a big boy (always has been), but is super well-proportioned!
• He has 6 teeth (4 top, 2 bottom).  
• His favorite foods are bananas and watermelon.  He also loves his "milky-milky"...bottles only as of a couple weeks before his birthday.  
• He is particularly interested in birds, dogs, and all things with motors (cars, etc).  
• He can say Dad, Nana (banana), and uh-ee (uh-oh).  
• He's a good sleeper at night, but started taking only one nap several months ago.  We did barely stop swaddling him a few weeks ago when he goes to sleep (something our other kids didn't want), but he still goes down with his blankie.  
• Things he hates (passionately) are being wiped down after eating and getting dressed (clothes on).
• He loves that he can get around now and explore and stairs are one of his favorite things to do.  He also enjoys emptying things out of their containers...anything.  
• Max has a mischievous sense of humor already and seems to understand humor in teasing.  
• He likes to join in on wrestling dad with his older brothers.  
• I love his curls on the back of his head, and am holding Dad off on Max getting that first haircut as long as possible.  
• Ever since he was a new baby Max has loved being outside.  We're sad to see him develop seasonal allergies and hope that's something that resolves and doesn't get worse (or expand to other allergies) as time goes on.
• Ever since Max stopped being colicy (around 3 months) he has been such an "easy", happy baby.  Right around his birthday we have just begun to see an emergence of opinions and even glimpses of a temper (which would probably be lessened if he could communicate, but he isn't showing much interest in signing).
• We are so glad to have this 3rd little boy in our family.  His brothers, parents, grandparents (and everyone else that knows him) all adore him and we can't image not having him in our lives!