Winter "One"derland

Our son turned one on Dec. 6th. It blows my mind just how fast a year can go when you measure and celebrate it by one month increments ! A few months before his birthday I began thinking about his first birthday party. I only had a few ideas then:

1. I wanted a small family gathering at our house (our family is big enough as is, 24 is the number of close family members lol)
2. I wanted it to have a theme

At first, I thought a mustache party would be fun and was what it I wanted for the theme, but then I was looking around Pinterest and saw ideas for a "Winter ONEderland." I was smitten. After all, Lil B would only be one once, so that theme could only work for a first birthday. The only issue was I didn't like the traditional colors that most people used for it or the penguins that most of the parties seemed to have, so I keep looking for more ideas. When I looked on Etsy and found one invitation, I knew immediately that was it and it would help with the rest of the decorations/theme for the party.

Here is the invitation I saw that sealed the deal for me on the theme:
Ting creates makes them. She was amazing to work with too, very professional, great response time and the invitations were amazing. Card stock thickness and a shimmer tone to them. Beautiful Ting Creates

Here is our actual invite. I played around a bit with the wording on it too.

Next up I wanted to find a label that would be used to seal our invitations. I found a great seller on Etsy who created a very cute label for us. purpleberryink
Of course ours, had our personal information on it, this was just the example.

Then the decorations began. It's great that Lil B's birthday is the same month as Christmas because our home would already be decorated for Christmas. And of course, any new items that were purchased could tie in for a later date too. Here is a view of my hutch and the full view of the dining room/kitchen.

I pinned this style of  how to frost a cake a few weeks prior to the party. Mr. B practiced to make sure we had an idea of how to do it. It wasn't that bad, but it took some time.

I wanted to have a sign with some cute word play on beverages on our fridge. My entire kitchen was up for everyone to do as they wished and pleased, so I figured this would be an easy way to show where the drinks were. I made up the names to the drinks the we had. Kind of silly for sure, but stuck with the theme. I placed Lil B's first year photo shoot pictures up too for everyone to see as well. Photos care of Jennifer Bennett Photography http://www.jbennettphotography.com/

I made this label on Zazzle for the "Melted Snowflakes" water


Here is the hot cocoa bar. 

The chili bar was nuts. I had three crock pots full of chili. The stove had rice or macaroni and then there were fixings. (wish I had more pics !)  Everyone loved it !

Chili !!

Dessert bar was up next. So many ideas. Here are  a ton of some shots of it. Pretty fun to put together.I used a table cloth to place on our counter, lots of dishes, cakes stands I already had and some green glass that my Uncle had recently given to us.

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I used a sled from Michael's to put the cupcakes on too. The small trees I also bought at Michael's to place on the cupcakes

"snow mat hats" aka Oreo cookie bites

"polar icecaps" aka vanilla meringues

"snowballs" aka powdered donuts

"snow covered pretzels" aka chocolate covered pretzels

I wanted to incorporate the theme in the favor we gave out as well. I found many ideas on Pinterest for a hot cocoa favor. I figured how hard could they be to make? Well, they were a bit of a pain but worth it in the end. Here is the sign that we placed by the favors :

Here is a close up of the hot cocoa favors. I made the label on Zazzle too.

And but of course to stick with the theme, why not have them in a sleigh !

Lil B's gifts were going to be set up in one corner of our dining room. I figured I would place a sign and a balloon to make it easier for everyone to know where to place his gifts. Here are some pictures :

I wanted to share the monthly pictures I had taken of Noah through out his first year with everyone and found a very cute way to display it. I found the idea of course on Pinterest. I already had an old window frame that I added some stick on snowflakes and ribbon. The pictures are hung by clothespins and I added the sign, "Oh what a year !" to the top of the window pane. The "Sledding" book worked well with the theme too. I purchased it off of Etsy and asked everyone to sign it for Lil B to look back on.

                                  And of course our birthday boy !!

Here is a link to my secret Pinterest board that I now have opened for everyone to see. Enjoy it ! Lil B's party idea