Come One! Come All! 1st Birthday

Last month was my sweet little baby girl's first birthday, I just can't believe how fast time goes by! 

I wanted to do something fun, but not over the top... now with 3 birthdays every year I figure we may start having to do them a little more 'budget friendly' if you know what I mean :)

I love the idea of this being the first celebration of many for her so I thought the phrase "Come One, Come All" was perfect, and who doesn't love the circus right!?!

Here is the cute little birthday girl in here Ringmaster outfit

Sorry for the fuzzy pics, my camera wouldn't focus!

Now that the camera started working properly, so frustrating, here is more pics...

The party was smaller with just family, so I set up a smaller table for all the little cousins.

At each place setting there was a circus party hat and cute little circus tent favor box with a gumball animal inside. 

I just adored these circus tent boxes, they fit the gumballs perfect!

We had clowns, elephants, lions, monkeys, and tiger gumball buddies from the Peppermint Place.

We also had cute animal circus animal cutouts for the table centerpieces.

I set up a small circus tent dessert bar. We kept the treats light and simple for this party.

Adorable custom circus sign from Wants and Wishes and I made the circus tent from plastic table clothes from a local party store.

For the birthday cake I decided to do keep with the theme and do 3 to resemble the 3 rings at the circus.

The elephant topped off the design holding a number 1 flag

but my favorite was this little guy...

On one side of the cake we had a sweet side of circus treats...

First no circus would be complete without cotton candy!

Animal Cracker Cookies, Marshmallow Peanuts, and sweet Kettle Corn popcorn.

On the other side we had matching treats that were not as sugary...

There was buttered popcorn, salty peanuts, and animal crackers.

We had to incorporate clowns into this circus themed dessert table as well...

Clown Nose Suckers!

also a custom printable from Wants and Wishes

and one more shot of the cake just because I loved it!

All the party hats, cotton candy cones, popcorn boxes, and circus tent favor boxes were from Oriental Trading.

 

I made the birthday girl's top hat and tutu, the onesie was from Cupcakes Cottage

 My cute little clowns!

She LOVED her smash cake :)

I hope you enjoyed our little circus celebration and can't wait for more to come!

Sweet Pea Baby Shower

I am finally posting this! Last month one of my good friends and I had the pleasure of throwing a shower for another friend who is blessed with having twins, a boy and girl! This is an occasion that you can't pass up! She already has 3 other kids, so we decided to go with a diaper shower since she has double duty! It was so fun and I loved the theme - Two Peas In A Pod. We also went with the open house style, I am not a huge fan of baby shower games, so this was great to just eat and visit with the guests.

The main color scheme for the shower was green and white, with hints of yellow and brown. I found a huge roll of lime green and white polka dot wrapping paper and a local craft store and new that it was the perfect accent color and pattern and matched part of the invites too! For the seating tables we just took a white table clothe and then rolled our a strip of wrapping paper for the runner. The centerpieces were white picture frames with little quotes on coordination designs from the invitations. Also a mason jar wrapped in burlap and ribbon with white, green, and yellow flowers, and a little jar of Hershey kisses that had little custom labels on the bottom. For each setting we had a green square plate, cloth napkin folded into a diaper, and small wooden utensils inside the diapers We didn't do much food since it was an open house, but we did serve a green PEA lettuce salad and rolls for a small dish.
Pea lettuce Salad There was a little dessert bar. For that we hung a white sheet for the backdrop and a white table cloth on the table. We got some cute wood letters spelling "Sweet Peas" and covered them also with the wrapping paper and hung them on the backdrop, then hung green paper lanterns around the words (I thought they would resemble giant peas). For the snacks we had cupcakes with little peas in a pod cupcake toppers, chocolate donut holes, powdered sugar donut holes, white chocolate dipped oreos, and sugar cookies. We placed each plate on a box to give it some height and dimention and wrapped in the same wrapping paper. I Also put a piece of wrapping paper on each plate to make the treats pop a little bit. For the cupcake towers, I took various sizes of hat boxes and wrapped those also in the wrapping paper and just stacked them upside down ontop of each other. I thought they turned out super cute and super easy to make! For beverages, we served lime water in a large picher that I wrapped a diaper around the base. I wanted diapers to be incorporated a bit all over since it was a diaper shower too! Again we didn't have games, but we did have some diapers that people could write fun little messages to give the parents a laugh later on for a little activity. There had to be a diaper cake for a centerpiece to go with the whole 'diaper shower' and also to give to the mommy, but wanted to do something a little bit different. So I made a diaper pod! 
I just took 42 diapers and rolled them up individually and stuck a rubberband around them each. Then take 21 and make a big circle in 3 layers: 1 in the center, 7 in the middle, and 13 on the outside). Do that twice. Place the 2 circles next to each other and one large rubberband around them both. Then I placed them on a couple large sheets of tissue paper (or you could use a baby blanket) and wrapped around the sides of the circles gathering the ends on each sides of the circles. Then a tied each end up with some rafia or you could use a ribbon or whatever. For the finishing part a made two large babies that matched the invites out of cardstock and pasted them onto some little sticks and stuck them inside the diapers. I hope that this all makes sense, and when you see the picture I think you can pretty much figure it out! And lastely for the favors, we made pea pod soaps. I have seen quite a variety of these online and some are way super cute! We went with a simpler and cheaper version that we could make ourselves. We got some 'make you own soap' kits at hobby lobby and just melted the soap, died it green, and poured them into round molds. Once they hardend we stuck 2 together on a piece of carboard and wrapped with tissue paper (or you could use a wash clothe), and tied the ends with rafia. They were super easy to make and a whole lot cheaper than oredering them online. Well that is pretty much it for the shower! Hope that any of this helps and inspires someone! And I would love to read you thoughts or comments. Thanks so much!

Vendor Credits:
- Invitations: Cherished Times
- Wooden Cutlery: Tie the Knot
- Chocolate Covered Oreos: Janet Cristina
- Sugar Cookies : Lil G's Cookies
- Pea Pod Cupcake Toppers: Sweeten Your Day
- Wooden Letters, Paper Lanterns, Hat Boxes : Hobby Lobby