Perron's Birthday Extravaganza Part One: The Decor

As y'all know, Perron celebrated his first birthday this past weekend.  I took so many pictures, that I am going to have to do multiple posts and break them up into sections.  I will start with the decor and then move on to the birthday boy.  I thought long and hard on what theme I wanted for this special event and finally decided on vintage carnival.  I spent hours trolling Etsy looking for the perfect invitations, decorations, outfits, you name it I looked at it.  I poured over blogs about children's parties.  I spent hours painstakingly crafting the decorations.  And I had the time of my life doing it.  I told Stephen that he was not allowed to say one thing other than, that sounds great dear, and I was to be given free reign over the budget, the decor, the food and everything else.  He sweetly obliged and never once asked how much something cost.  Such a good husband....plus I have a feeling that he didn't want to know.  He kept saying that I was going to have solicit sponsors to fund the party.  He might have been partly right.  :)

But this was a celebration for all of us.  A celebration that we had all made it through this year with our sanity in tact.  Plus, your first born only turns one once...right!?!  I was a little nervous because sometimes I have ideas in my head about how things are supposed to turn out, and then when they don't materialize they way I want I get disappointed.  Luckily the party gods were smiling on me, and everything turned out exactly they way I imagined, if not better.

As I mentioned, the theme was vintage carnival and the color scheme was aqua blue and red. I had the pleasure of working with some awesome vendors from Etsy and I could not have pulled this off without their creativity.  He fabulous invitations and custom circles, as well as the inspiration for the party came from Paper and Pigtails, his adorable sign came from Embellishments By Rachel, all of the vintage party supplies came from Hey YoYo and his precious outfit (which you will see in a later post) came from Izzy B Designs.  Thank you to all of these ladies for helping me make Perron's birthday so special.  I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I did the planning!

The centerpiece of the party.  I got my inspiration from Amy Atlas' dessert tables, although mine is no where near as fancy and well done as her's are.

The precious elephant PB&J sandwhiches for the kiddos.  What carnival is complete without an elephant?

Look at the adorable birthday circles.  I decorated all of my vases with lots of ribbon in my theme colors.  It is amazing what you can do with a little double-sided tape.

Peanuts!  Get Your Peanuts!

I love these vintage popcorn boxes from Hey YoYo.  I was able to use these in so many different ways.  I got this idea by combining two tablescape ideas we had at our last Smithfield shoot.  I was trying to go for the look of popcorn overflowing the bucket.  I think it turned out pretty good.

Fruit kabobs.  This reminds me that I have gone this far without saying thank you to my little sister.  She was such a huge help.  She spent many a night at the house helping me get things ready.  She then spent all day the day of his party helping me (and getting a million splinters from bamboo skewers) all on only 4 hours of sleep after a particularly wild and crazy night out.  What a good little sister and aunt!

The party favors.  They included side walk chalk, masks, and stickers.  So easy, but so cute.  Notice the precious thank you tags.

Yummy popcorn in precious bags that matched the color scheme exactly.

A shot with the cupcakes on their stand.  Love the popcorn boxes that flank the stand with the cute circles.

Yummy cupcakes for the kiddies.  I am going to let you in on a little secret....the cupcakes and Perron's cake was from Publix.  I was a little nervous, but it they did a great job and they were so delicious!

Can you believe my baby is one!?!?!  I can't.  I have told Stephen a million times that I could not believe we were about to be parents of a one year old.  Stay tuned for the next post in the series, which will be all about the birthday boy and star of the show.