Pete, Jen, Sawyer....and Izzy too!: July 2013

Well, our baby is officially a "toddler" now! As excited as I was to plan his party and decorate for it, I was really dreading it because I feel like he's no longer a baby, and is a little boy lol. He's walking all over the place, getting into EVERYTHING, has a mini temper when he wants something he can't have, and he definitely has a mind of his own. However, he's such a sweetie and I can't get enough of him!

For his birthday, I decided to go with a Giraffe theme. Sawyer is OBSESSED with giraffes. If he sees one on a wall, a shirt, a toy, anything, he goes crazy (that and balls!!) so I figured I could make something cute out of a giraffe theme. However, there were barely any ideas out there with giraffes so it was kind of challenging. Everything was either zoo, or monkey, no giraffes, so i had to be a little creative in my planning.

Since Sawyer was born, I've been taking monthly pictures of him so I knew I wanted to show those off. On Pinterest, I had seen a link of making a "Happy Birthday" Banner so I decided to make my own of that as well. Other than that, I knew I wanted it to be blue and green with giraffes, not the orange and yellow.

My cousin Whitney and I made the big "Happy Birthday Sawyer" Banner one day in greens and blues. After that, I printed his monthly pictures and strung it with some cool giraffe ribbon I found at Hobby Lobby. I decided for centerpieces to just have pictures of Sawyer with some of his giraffe stuffed animals, and yes...he has enough!

The biggest challenge was finding names for each of the foods. I wanted something fun and googled things over and over and found NOTHING. So annoying. I had things figured out except for the carrots/celery cups. My husband said how about longnecks (even though that was a beer idea!) so we went with that!

I made all of the food signs myself and had my mom write on them since her handwriting is neater than mine :) I picked out random pictures to use for the "ONE" sign and had my mom tape those on. Finally, I wanted something all the guests could sign for him to keep forever. He received a book called "My Pet Giraffe" and absolutely destroyed the inside. Pages ripped, pages out, pages crumbled etc. I thought that would be perfect. I went and bought another book so he'd still have one, but I thought using the old book that he definitely used and looked at would add character to it and had everyone sign the "old" book.

Overall, the party turned out great!!! I'll have a whole year to plan out the 2nd party :) but he better enjoy being 1 for awhile yet :)

Centerpiece...two pics, a giraffe and balloons.

The "ONE" Picture board, the "monthly pics" a banner below the table and the book for guests to sign. It said "Thank you for coming to my first birthday. Please write me a message in my favorite book so I can always remember my 1st birthday. Love, Sawyer"