The Vakakes Family: The Party

I am not really sure how people planned birthday parties before Pinterest. I thought I was doing good in that I had picked out and ordered Alex's invitations in the middle of April. Well, that was about all I did until about a week before the party. Bless his heart-I had a little trouble getting motivated because the end of school is such a busy time. I convinced myself that I had whole week after school got out before party weekend and that would be plenty of time to run around and get all those little ideas turned into some sort of reality. I was badly mistaken. I found myself out late after the boys went to bed browsing Hobby Lobby, Target, Party City....I ALMOST paid $20 to ship napkins (that were $3...). Thankfully that moment on insanity passed, and I called around until I found what I was looking for (on Thursday before the party mind you). John and I stayed up late on Friday getting last minute things hung up and all in all it really came together. Will's first birthday was planned (completely) in October...his birthday is in January. I did not want to feel like I gave Alex the shaft. And I don't think we did.....
Almost every single one of my visions for Alex's party came from pinterest. Mind you, it was nothing hard, crazy, outrageous, or even original. Just when put together it looked pretty cute and I had so much fun celebrating Alex through his first birthday party. We invited family and close friends and really kept it simple as far as food goes. I did his party at 4:00 so I could get away with not serving a meal. We had cake and ice cream, animal crackers with cake batter dip, fruit kabobs, baby goldfish, and "1" cookies with white and chocolate milk. Many thanks to those who helped me pull off our sweet baby's party-my mom who made the "1" cookies and who served as my late night errand accomplice, my friend Angela who made the precious photo clips to hang Alex's monthly shots on, and my husband who created the balloon/streamer background, taste tested my donut pops, and helped keep me going when I felt like giving up :) I'll let the pictures tell the story of Chunk-A-Monk's first birthday party!

I had big plans to make cake pops for the favors, but I just ran out of time. A friend gave me the idea to just dip donut holes in candy melts and decorate them. Same effect....and they were yummy (because let's be honest, you can't mess up a donut!!) I found the stickers on Etsy-they read "Thanks for making my first birthday so sweet!"

The milk station....I had my whole family drinking those Starbucks Frappacinnos you can buy at Wal-Mart-we saved the bottles and my mom scrubbed the labels off :) I have about 30 if anyone ever needs to borrow them! And I found precious blue and white polka dotted paper straws on Amazon. Turned out so cute!!