Holly's {Pink, Girly} First Birthday Party

Last weekend, we celebrated our girl.

She turned one in late December, but LORD HAVE MERCY, I don't think I'll ever be able to swing a party for her two days after Christmas. So, as we trekked through the month of January and I shared thoughts and mumblings of maybe not doing a party for her, her brothers were NOT having that. Each one of them has had a special party celebrating their first birthday (and we look at their pictures quite often), and BY GOLLY, their girl was getting a party.

As I started to think about how to celebrate her, after four brothers, I decided on pink.

Girly and pink.

My friends laugh at me because while I LOVE having a baby girl, I don't dress her in pink tutu big bows girly ruffles a whole lot. She's more of a hightop Chucks and skinnies girl. But, for her first birthday, I wanted her to have pink, girly party. I went onto Pinterest - *which I don't use very often because HOLY OVERWHELMING, Batman - to see if I could find some kind of theme or some ideas (but, again - HOLY OVERHELMING WHERE DO YOU EVEN BEGIN, Batman?), and decided that I'd head out to Target and the Dollar Tree and just wing it and see what I could come up with.

Her party ended up being a hodgepodge of things and random ideas, but in the end, I love how it came together. The boys helped, her Daddy helped, and we had a small gathering of friends and family and celebrated our girl in a sweet little party.

The One Spot (Dollar bins) at Target were full of Valentine's Day "stuff", and when I saw a pack of 10 sheets of card stock for $1, I knew they would be the perfect place to start. (Seriously LOVE those bins - always cute, cheap stuff.) They had matching tins and some other matching accessories, so I grabbed a few of those for our plastic forks, spoons, etc.

The one idea I saw on Pinterest that I really loved was to display photos of our birthday girl. I haven't blogged much since she's been born, but I've told her first year's story with photos over on Instagram. So, I printed a whole bunch of photos and used those to decorate our kitchen.

*The Walgreens app allows you to print 4"x4" Instagram photos right from your phone/Instagram account directly to the store. It took me less than 10 minutes to choose and send all the photos I wanted to Walgreens, and picked them up one hour later. This made it so easy for me. (*Disclaimer: Walgreens has no idea who I am. I just loved their app for this.)

We used twine and clothespins to string them up over our sideboard. I loved looking through them as we were decorating and remembering so many sweet moments we've shared with her.

My baker extraordinaire friend, Andrea, made my favorite cupcakes (Dark chocolate with Oreo frosting) and made Holly's smash cake. Because every little bitty needs a pink, girly, personalized smash cake for her first birthday!

Over in the party section at Target, I bought a $5 photo booth kit, and we had SO much fun with it. The kids loved it, and we took photos and printed them on 4 x 6 photo paper on the spot so that everyone could take home a photo of themselves as a party favor.

I LOVE having these photos of our sweet little friends and family!

We had a very simple lunch.

Oven Baked Ham and Swiss Sliders (that I made the night before.)
{The Best, Easiest} Crockpot Mac & Cheese
Strawberry Applesauce
Chips
Pink Sherbert Punch

And, our girl - she has MANY protective boys in her life. Her Daddy (who packs SERIOUS front porch heat), four big brothers, her brothers' friends, and boy cousins.

She'll never date. Ever.

This past Christmas, we bought a tree for our kitchen to display our Christmas cards from family and friends. Even though I've taken the cards down, I kept the tree up because I love it so much. As I was thinking about Holly's party, I wanted to incorporate our tree into her party in a special way.

I found a pack of foam hearts at Target, and using the same clothespins we used to hang our Christmas cards, we each chose a printed photo of Holly, and wrote a message to her.

This was my favorite.

*When her party was over, I took all of the photos/messages our family and friends had written to her and made an 8"x8" one year album for her.

I cherish this album. I think she will one day, too.

And, then...

Let's sing and LET HER EAT CAKE!

It was such a special day for our sweet baby girl.

Well, I guess it was really a special day for all of us.

Because we love her so.

And, we loved celebrating all the pink, girly joy and life she brings to our family.