E's 1st Birthday Party!

Last night was the big celebration of E's 1st birthday, but I will be very forthcoming by mentioning my sweet baby boy is still a mere 11 months old! We needed to celebrate his big milestone birthday a little over 2 weeks early due to the pending quarantine bubble my family will be entering after Easter Sunday in preparation for Chase's Fontan (3rd heart surgery) at the beginning of May. This is a happy post though, so let's dwell on the fun times!

I made a "Happy Birthday!" banner for E just as I had done previously for LO and Chase. I reuse these every year and simply modify the graphics to fit the theme of each party. This year's elephants may turn into next year's Elmo!

I also made a photo garland using pics of baby E from birth through 11 months. I'm okay that there isn't a 12 month shot on here because, again, my baby isn't 1 yet! ;)

Side note: Sorry for the terrible photos. It seems I've lost a big chunk of my "perfectionist" personality once I found myself with 3 little youngsters at home to contend with. No worries, though! I'm mostly okay with it.

Here are some (poor) shots of the individual pics...

A few pics of the foodstuffs...

The big birthday cake! This bad boy is much larger than it appears! Again, I'd like to note that I'm no longer a perfectionist and there are several little things I would've liked to do differently, but overall I was happy with the outcome. It's a 4-layer cake alternating chocolate and vanilla bean layers, filled with white chocolate chip buttercream and frosted with vanilla buttercream. It was quite delish! I did have to purchase actual dinner plates for the cake as it was very evident that a dessert plate just wouldn't do!

A little smash cake for my little guy! I kept his simple with just vanilla bean cake with vanilla buttercream. He was a BIG fan. More on that below...

I made elephant cookies and chocolate covered Oreo cookies as little Thank You gifts for our partygoers.

The cookies were super cute! I had fun making them and look forward to doing other designs for future parties.

Oh, yes. The big boy (baby) of the hour! This is the only shot of him where you can see the outfit I made for him. It's a blue and white seersucker jon jon (short all) with an adorable birthday elephant appliqué.

This is a post-party pic of the much-loved outfit. It's a hot mess but you can see how adorable it was!

Time for spaghetti! E was a big fan!

Let's not forget big sister and big brother enjoying dinner, too!

Cake time! We had no way of preparing for the destruction that was about to ensue. Boy loves him some cake! It didn't take long at all for him to get his fingers into that frosting once his cake landed on his high chair...

Moments later... he's tearing into the cake!

The happy times were over when Daddy tried to take his cake away. He was terribly upset until Daddy decided to give it back.

So, just in case you missed it...

BEFORE:

AFTER:

We had a super fun time celebrating with our closest family and dearest friends. E did great all night and didn't seem the slightest bit uncomfortable with all of the attention all night long. He was up way past his usual bedtime but didn't seem phased a bit! It was a fantastic party, but I'm looking forward to his actual birthday on April 30th when we can start his day off right with birthday pancakes, a few more gifts and lots more love and attention from his adoring family.