Abigail's 1st Birthday - The Decorations

I have been working on Abigail's birthday party for a month now.....Andy thinks I am crazy but I have to say it was absolutely worth every penny and energy spent!  We had such a blast at her party and I know she will not remember it but I will remember how much fun she had.  I have so many great pictures to remember it by that I am going to have to spread this out over many posts.

I will start with the decoration...
I have to admit that I steal all of my ideas from friends, Etsy and Pinterest.  I am not very creative but love to make things, I just need inspiration.  Thankfully I have creative friends and a friend that let me borrow her Cricut.  The Cricut is awesome!
  

I got this idea from my very creative friend Julie. I bought the letters at Joann's Fabric (I think....I spent so much time there, Michael's, and at Hobby Lobby that I'm not sure where I bought what).  They were brown so I painted them white and that was it...very easy.  We also used them during our photo shoot on Friday, I can't wait to see how they turned out.  Abigail kept looking through the O, it was too cute!  

 

I found this awesome chevron ribbon at Hobby Lobby and my wonderful mom made me a few bows.  I love them!

This is where the Cricut come in handy....

 

Here is my dining room the day of the party, everything came together nicely.  We catered food from Taziki's (chicken, pasta salad, & hummus) and had a fruit tray and homemade cupcakes.  All things that Abigail loves to eat.  We served lemonade and water to drink.  

This was another idea that I stole from my friend Julie.  I saw her monthly photos a few years ago at her first son's 1st birthday party and knew I wanted to do the same thing.  I will love having these pictures for years to come and they made for an amazing banner.  Its so much fun to see how she changed month to month.  I may not take this one down.  : )

My mom made wonderful mini cupcakes for me.  They were so yummy and looked so pretty with my toppers.  Also, in this picture you can see the party hats that I made.  I thought they would be pretty easy but they ended up being kind of hard.  I cut out the pattern, glued on the ribbon and tapped on the string (sounds easy right...very deceiving).  On Abigail's I glued on a # 1.

I decided to do this at the last minute so I was unable to get a one year old picture of Andy.  He is a little younger in his pic but I still think it turned out cute.  Andy still thinks she looks just like me with his eyes.  

I found these cute chevron paper straws on Etsy.

Food markers made with the Cricut....This paper was so cute and my sister, who has much better handwriting than me, finished them by writing the names on for me.

Another bow my mom made with this awesome ribbon.

Party favors.  I bought the chevron favor bags on Etsy and filled them with chocolate covered marshmallows from Edgars.  This was a last minute decision but turned out cute and yummy.