Lucy's 1st Birthday Party

The cupcake eating

I've read Pinterest posts, blog posts and more about "baby's first birthday party."  Now let me tell you, the only thing that I did was document the cupcake eating...because who doesn't love watching a baby eat sugar?!  HAHA  Here's a quick list of the things that I did to make Lucy's party a success!

1. The guest list.  Our first list had 79 people on it!  That's almost how many we invited to our wedding!  We were able to cut it to 65 and about 60 came.  I realize this sounds ridiculous, but both of our families live in town, so things get a little crazy.
2. The color scheme.  Yeah, I know I probably should've done a little kid theme like lady bugs, bumble bees, or princesses, but Lucy doesn't know the difference, so I'm holding out!  I chose blush and burlap with some gold accents. 
3. The invitation.  I'm fortunate enough to have a sister in law that has "typekit font" style writing, so she hand wrote it, I had copies made, and I mounted them on burlap color paper.  Then I tied a pink string around it and added a gold heart.  Bam!  Done.
4. Menu: sausage and hot dogs.  This was selfish because we didn't have to prep anything except the onions.  Just fire up the grill, put buns and condiments out and call it a day!  Had guests bring sides: mac salad, potato salad, green salad, fruit salad, etc.  EASY!
5. Tables/Chairs/Shade.  We have those folding 6' tables, so I had a few set up for the food, a couple set up for people to sit and had 5 cream colored 7.5ft umbrellas for shade.  There's nothing worst than going to an outdoor party and melting!
6. Signature cocktail.  Ok, this may seem weird, but I figure we are celebrating the fact that Jerud and I made it a year too...not just Lucy!  We did champs with pomegranate juice.  Simple and...PINK!  Perfect!  Also, we were able to find some Lucy rose!  How perfect is that!?
7. The cupcakes.  My sister in law came over Friday afternoon and we made 3 boxes of cupcake mix: chocolate, yellow cake and Funfetti.  Then we made butter cream frosting and cream cheese frosting and went to town!  We had a cupcake table at the party to double as decorations.
8. Decoration wise, we kept it pretty simple.  Table cloths with a burlap runner, flowers (my mother in law did all those),  and chalkboards with a gold frame that had some fun Lucy facts and one for the menu.  
9. Activities...we kept it pretty simple here too.  We didn't even open presents until everyone left.  Too many people and Lucy was pretty fried.  Got some bubbles and little toys from the dollar section at Target for the other little kids that would be there.  We had an empty frame that I went around and had people get in and take their pic (I'm including a copy of the pic with their thank you cards).  Lastly, we got two picture frames with pens for people to write messages for Lucy and framed a couples pic of her in them.

All in all, the party was a HUGE success.  It wasn't hard.  We didn't over do anything.  It was a great day with great friends and family and great food!  It's pretty easy to get carried away with this kind of stuff, so I find keeping it simple is the way to go!