Lil’ Chica’s Nautical First Birthday Party

Lil' Chica greeting her guests.

I’m still adjusting to the idea that my sweet little baby is now a toddler. She’s had no trouble adjusting to the new title and is toddling and climbing all over the place! Lil’ Chica started walking just before her first birthday and has her big bro’s constant shadow, as best as she can keep up. To celebrate her first year we threw a big party. After all, we had celebrated with Lego mania for Lil’ O’s first birthday, so it was only fair to do something similarly big for our little girl.

Party Planning

Husby and I aren’t big fans of princess stuff, but I need a theme to keep me focused. I love all the nautical stuff that’s in style right now, and don’t anticipate ever having an opportunity for an overtly themed nautical shindig for adults, so I figured Lil’ Chica’s first birthday was just the thing. I’ve always wanted to run with this theme and she’s too little to tell me otherwise. First birthdays really are more for the parents.

The catch this time around, though, was that we needed to also make it fun for Lil’ O, who is now three and a half and full of opinions. To help with the fun factor, I invited some of his closest friends from preschool and went on a Pinterest hunt for something fun for the older kids. When I stumbled upon this pin from Parents.com for a homemade sailboat, I knew we were in business. Let the pinning and party planning commence!

Grilled Cheese Bar Birthday Party

Birthday celebrations are fun, but can sometimes bring challenges. In my family for birthdays we tend to get together for dinner – either out to eat at the birthday person’s place of choice or dining in with a favorite meal – give gifts and eat cake. It’s a great formula for birthday success! This year, I felt home bound by our adorable kiddos. Dining out is just not much fun these days, so I didn’t want to get everyone out just to be forced to wrangle kids in an unfamiliar-to-them environment and be stressed through all of dinner. But, what to eat?! After much deliberation and restaurant take-out research, I landed on a favorite childhood meal, but with a twist.

Enter the grilled cheese bar. My mom makes a mean grilled cheese, so I wanted to take advantage of her mad skills, plus see how we could adventure to make new, maybe more adult grilled cheese combinations. I Googled this grand idea, and sure enough, it’s a thing! Bloggers and celebrities have shared the idea, so I took what I thought would work best for our family and pitched the idea to my family. Thankfully, they were game. And, we had quite the spread!

Grilled Cheese Bar Spread

Gender Reveal Party & News!

As I’ve settled into the new job, pregnancy is feeling more and more real. And, since we didn’t find out the sex of Lil’ O until we met him face to face, we decided to go the other route with this little one and find out if it’s a boy or girl early. This is probably our last baby, so we wanted to get both experiences. And, since we enjoy a good party, we hosted a gender reveal party to share the big news. Not even our parents were in on the surprise. 

Yup, it's a baby!

First, we had the almighty sonogram. Regardless of the fateful picture showing a boy or girl, the ultrasound is such a cool experience. It really made it sink in that I am indeed very pregnant and in another few months we’ll have another precious little one to love and cuddle and nurture. After nearly 20 minutes of official sonogram pictures and measurements, it came time. Husby and I decided to learn the news together there with the technician, so we could keep it more intimate and also to each adjust to the news either way. Just as I was extolling the virtues of one, the technician announced it was clearly the other. Wow! Good thing we found out there, because we both needed proof. We hadn’t done this part with Lil’ O and we had no idea what we were looking at in most of the pictures.

We had a couple weeks to sit with the news and plan out the party, in part because I had a week away for work. We planned and prepped, but mostly kept it low-key, opting for BBQ and a few simple sides to accompany the “Get the Scoop” ice cream social theme and gender reveal cake. I collected “votes” from both our families to learn what they each thought the baby would be and pulled together a flyer using a template from blogger  Confetti Sunshine. We shared our version of the completed flyer with family just before the party – it was a fun way to keep the out-of-town family part of the experience. We wish everyone could come out, but living on the other side of the country makes that difficult and we know it. The day of the party, we took votes from friends and kept mum through lunch. Then, we got Aunt La on the phone, began taping for those who couldn’t be reached and served up dessert. It was such a fun experience!

Eagerly awaiting the news

And, ultimately, we got to share that we’re having a GIRL!!! We are so thrilled! We would have of course been happy regardless, but it will be really special to have both a boy and girl. Plus, it’s about time I got a female in this house. ;)

Let the little girl shopping begin!

Lil’ O’s First Birthday!

Lil' O back when he was just a lil' guy.

Somehow my baby boy has turned one! It seems just yesterday that I felt as big as a house and we were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the little baby that would become Lil’ O. But, it also feels that it’s been ages since we were footloose and fancy free of the stresses and obligations that parenting brings. We wouldn’t change the chaos of our life for anything and Lil’ O brings so much joy into our home and our lives.

To celebrate the all-important first year, we threw a casual gathering for family and close friends. Since all the boys in the family, but especially Husby and his brother, love Lego, that became the theme of the party and my excuse to buy lots and lots of Duplo “as decoration.”  ;) 

 

We kept it casual with food on the grill and easy sides. No matter what we served, we knew the highlight would of course be Lil’ O’s first real taste of sugar. No surprise, it was a hit! We did have to feed him a taste before he realized the cupcake was something worth eating, but then he stuffed as much as he could in his mouth and barely bothered with chewing.

 

We had a blast, though we did have a lower turnout than expected as a few whole families were sick. Seems our minor bought of sickness concluded while other families were just getting started. Bummer for everyone. Boo! On the positive side, it did make the shindig more casual, which I appreciated. The party was wonderful, but was just one piece of a celebratory week, which also included celebrating Lil’ O’s birthday on his actual day with banana bread for all the kiddos at daycare and reprised with family that evening, lots of gifts, hosting my in-laws (from Ohio) for a week-long visit and visiting the zoo. So much fun!

We are so grateful for our dear friends and family that celebrated with us and more importantly who help us care for Lil’ O (and stay sane). Special shout out to my dad and Ms. E’s husband for taking such beautiful pictures at Lil’ O’s birthday party. Thanks guys!

Lulu’s Book-Themed Baby Shower

Throwing a baby shower can be a lot of fun, whew, but it’s also quite the undertaking. Ms. E and I were thrilled to throw a shower for our dear friend, Lulu. We jumped at the chance and planned for months. Once the time came, though, I was especially super glad we were in it together. We decided early on to divide duties according to our interest and strengths. She managed all of the food and I got to decorate! The shindig was also being held at my place, so I cleaned up, but that’s less exciting. Neither of us were quite sure what to do about games and we were super excited and relieved when another friend of Lulu’s, and a fellow bridesmaid to her, wanted to be involved. We delegated games/activities to her and didn’t look back. I sent out invites and managed overall direction and coordination to be sure we were all in sync across our assignments. Happy to report all went off without a hitch, well, not any noticeable hitches. ;)

Beyond determining roles, next up was finding the perfect shower theme. Lulu let us know she wanted something with lots of color and that the nursery would loosely be themed around The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We didn’t want to focus the shower on just The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but thought that was a great place to start. After much research, we found it! The perfect theme to fit our friend and that we could all rally behind. Books! In my décor research I found a shower that was themed around a few different books and we were sold! From there we picked our books, largely on what we thought would fit a colorful décor scheme and based on which books we most enjoy reading to our sons. Our top five picks, in no particular order, were Curious George, The Little Blue Truck, Goodnight Moon, Dr. Seuss, and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, of course.

Once we landed on the theme and books, Ms. E and I met to brainstorm food. The final menu and Ms. E’s adorable names for each dish are below. It’s totally inspired.

 

The Food

As already noted, Ms. E managed all things food and it was wonderful! I’m so grateful I wasn’t in this shower thing alone, she loves tackling party food – as she reflected on in her recent blog post (http://lifetossedtogether.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-career-in-baby-shower-food.html) – and she’s totally awesome at it! She made everything! Even the adorable names for the dishes.

Curious George:

Curry-ous George Chicken Salad Tea Sandwiches
Man with the Yellow Hat Cucumber Tea Sandwiches

Where the Wild Things Are:

Wild Rumpus Veggies and Dip
King of the Wild Things Fruit Salad

Good Night Moon:

Gouda Night Moon Cheese Plate

Little Blue Truck:

Read to Pop-Corn

The Very Hungry Caterpillar:

Very Hungry Caterpillar Cupcakes

The Décor

I love decorating! It’s fun and parties are a unique opportunity to explore since the decoration is meant to be short lived. We included copies of each book as part of the table décor, and I tried to have a decoration for each book as well. Thanks to our sons, we had a lot of the books already and were even able to use some of their toys for decoration. Resourceful, why, yes, we are, thank you. ;) The décor items and books mostly accompanied the adorable food that Ms. E prepared. In addition, I tried to bring in a lot of color since that was specifically requested. Lulu, our mama-to-be, already knows my place and I was hoping she would walk in and feel like the home was remade to suit the shower. So, I took down curtains and family photos to make room for decorations and hung lots of plastic tablecloths to bring in bright pops of color above windows and over the food. It took a bit of time, but the cut tablecloths that hung over the food might have been my favorite. I found the idea somewhere along the way while researching, but can’t seem to find the source blog now. Sad. Regardless, I love how it came out and it was an inexpensive way to bring in color, color, color!

My other favorite décor item and labor of love was the diaper cake. It seems like baby showers these days require a multi-tiered “cake” made of diapers, and we wanted to be sure ours was up to the fun as well as serving the functional need of providing our mama-to-be with diapers for her coming little guy. Since we knew Lulu was going for The Very Hungry Caterpillar in the nursery, I played it safe here and got a Hungry Caterpillar toy as the cake topper and decorated around that color scheme. The cake was “frosted” with blue and green plaid (I love plaid!) receiving blankets and the top of each layer was covered in red crinkle paper to hide the diapers below. I hid a few functional surprises within the center of each tier too for Lulu to find as she dismantles the cake to use those precious diapers. It might seem silly, but the cake is a fun centerpiece for a shower and dismantling the cake from my shower provided us with quite a few much-needed diapers! So, I was glad to share the joy of diapers and pass it along.

Ultimately, the shower came together well and Lulu seemed to enjoy it. Our only real glitch, I think, was that we weren’t quite ready when Lulu, her mom and mother-in-law arrived. Woops. Ms. E and I had been juggling prep with taking care of our little ones, Lil’ O and Lil’ Sir, plus my new puppy. (More to come on life with little pup in a future post.) Thank God my mom was with us to help us juggle – she pitched in taking care of the little guys, watching pup and generally helping us with some of the prep tasks. She was so helpful! Once the shower actually started and Ms. E and I came down from our prep frenzy, I think all went well. Lulu at least seemed pleased, and at the end of the day it’s all about the mama-to-be. :)

Love you, Lulu.

Baby Shower Prep & Planning

This week has been all about baby shower prep as I and few fellow gal pals gear up to throw the ultimate shower for our dear friend Lulu. As we all push into overdrive, I’ve been so grateful for the planning that’s already been done and is now bringing all of our elements together. We considered a few themes and did much research. So, while there will of course be pictures of Lulu’s baby shower, below are some of the themes and inspiration that we looked at while on the planning journey. I’m looking forward to seeing everything come together, but planning can be such fun as you try on all sorts of possibilities to see if each is a fit for the unique event you have in mind. And, if more than one is a fit, then determine how to mesh different things together to create a one-of-a-kind, signature party. Below are some of my favorite party themes that we encountered. Enjoy!

Curious George Party

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star Baby Shower

"In Full Bloom" French Garden Party Baby Shower

Nautical Birthday Party

Which is your favorite? Or, even better, what are your favorite places for party inspiration? I'd love to learn of some new sites and blogs for great party ideas. 

Cheers!