It's been an amazing year of firsts with our little Fally girl and her first birthday party was no exception. When she's sweet she's the sweetest and I couldn't think of a better theme for our summer babe than one with sweet treats. We had ice cream and popsicles everywhere and it turned out incredibly cute if I do say so myself.
I worked with Jennifer at Ady & Owen to create custom invitations that fit our theme perfectly. She even designed coordinating goodie bag tags for us on an easily printable template. We filled them with ice cream cone pens, mini popsicles paper pads, fun straws and good old marshmallow candy cones. Creativity runs in the family because her sister Heather made our sweet treats and O N E wooly ball garlands.
Michaels is where we found most of the themed decor including the sprinkle snack cups, ice cream cone cupcake holders and ceramic cone vases. Our dear florist friend supplied the most vibrant carnations we used around the house and to make the "ice cream" for the vases topped with a painted styrofoam ball. The ice cream cake toppers were also DIY projects, just painted floral styrofoam pieced together with toothpicks.
A few of you detail orientated people noticed that Fallon's party romper was an exact match to the print on the table cloth. We actually layered a white sheet with a few yards of turquoise fabric and then topped it with the ice cream print fabric found on Amazon! The table was set for a meal of mac 'n cheese baked into cupcake tins + fruit skewers for individual servings and hot dogs on the grill. Snack cups for the kiddos with a mix of animal crackers dipped in colored chocolate and sprinkles, pretzel sticks and Goldfish crackers were kept at the ready to venture off with them around the party. We later brought out the cupcakes baked into pointed cones and decorated to look like ice cream, popsicles and ice cream pops. They started melting quickly but the kids could have cared less, ice cream covered in Magic Shell with sprinkles on a stick is good even when it's running down your face.
We set up an inflatable pool with a slide, Fallon's other 2 baby pools and her new water table, a gift from my parents, in our backyard. The kids were having so much fun we didn't want to make them come inside to watch Fallon open all her gifts. So we went nontraditional and skipped that part. Of course when Fallon is old enough to understand and to be excited to open presents we will certainly let her!
Overall the party was a huge success and turned out exactly the way I had hoped. It was a beautiful, sunny summer day spent with family and friends to celebrate a whole year with our little girl. She stayed up well past her bedtime on a sugar high and crashed next to daddy. Now that's the sign of a great party! I am so thankful to my hubby and everyone who helped to make this vision for Fallon's first birthday shindig come together. I'm pretty sure it was the best day of her life!
