birthday planning

Planning Alma’s birthday celebration is definitely bittersweet.  I’m looking forward to hosting her party, and getting together with some of the people who love Alma.  But I am also in denial that my sweet baby is turning one!  It really can’t have been a whole year since I gave birth to her.  My memories of that day are still so vivid, and my sense of time has been warped this past year.  I know it’s cliche, but this first year of parenthood really did go by in a flash.

But here we are, just three weeks away from Alma’s birthday.  I decided to keep her party low-key: a few homemade things, a few store-bought things, a few friends & family members, and some tasty food.  Here’s a breakdown of the party plans:

DIY

These are all things we are making ourselves:

• Mini-cupcakes:  smash cakes are fun, but I think we’ll just offer Alma a mini-cupcake to keep her sugar intake at a minimum.  I’ll make a couple batches so the adults can have a few each.  I found a vegan recipe that I’m excited to try out.
• Lunch: I’m not sure what I’ll be serving for lunch yet, but it will be vegan and tasty!
• Picture display:  this will be pretty simple; probably just a line of wire with photos of Alma throughout the year clipped to it.
• Sensory table:  we decided to go ahead and make Alma a sand/water/sensory table from scratch.  We are using this tutorial as a guide, but I think ours will look a little different.  This is one of her birthday presents from us.  Since we are saving so much money making the table ourselves, we were able to buy her another ‘big’ gift, which I’ll show later in the post.
• Alma’s outfit:  one of Alma’s grandma’s is making her a special birthday dress!

Store-bought

Things for her party we decided to just buy:

• Mini-cupcake stand & cute cupcake liners
• Decorations (paper lanterns, balloons, birthday banner)
• Party favors for the kids:  not sure what will go in the goody bags, but they will be store-bought
• Climber: we found this used climber for $40!  They sell new for over $100.  It’s in really good condition, except for needing a little washing. It also had some water stuck inside a few pieces from being used outdoors, but we just drilled a few holes in the bottom and drained it out.  We placed it upstairs in our little bedroom nook.  In the summer, we’ll probably bring it outdoors.  (We gave it to her early because it just worked out that way with the folks we bought it from.  No sense in keeping it stored up until her birthday – she doesn’t know the difference!)

That’s pretty much it!  There isn’t a ‘theme’ for her birthday, but her decorations are pink-ish (but not overly so).

Despite the party planning, I am determined to soak up the last days of my baby’s first year.  Except some sappy posts in the coming weeks!