One Year Old in a Flash

One Year Old
I cannot believe how quickly the year flew by! It's so hard to believe that I have a one year old! She's walking 100%. She says "mama", "dada", "gigi", "diaper", "baby", "bye bye", "papa", "poppy", and more that I can't think of. She knows where her nose is and will point to it when asked. She throws her arms wide open when you ask how big is Finley. She's extremely happy. She smiles at strangers. She loves her doggies and kitty cat. She loves dancing to the Fraggle Rock theme song. Her bed time is 8:30 and if it's a weekend, she'll sleep until 7:30-8:30ish. She's got a great sense of humor for someone so young, and I'm just so excited to watch her grow even more. (Even though it's bittersweet.) It seriously feels like just yesterday I wrote this blog. And re-watching this video that Anna made me last year makes me so sad at how much has changed in what feels like no time. I'm happy that my little baby is growing up and turning into such a fun little friend, but I miss that tiny little baby, too. I think what makes me the most sad about it all is that it went SO FAST, and I know that means that the rest of the years will go by just as fast. :( Anna made me another video for her birthday that is just as much a tear jerker as the last one. I am crazy about the songs in this video!

The Party
When I first starting thinking about Finley's birthday party, I originally didn't want a theme. I just wanted it to be pink and yellow and aqua. Then Anna said she had seen the greatest theme and thought we definitely needed to use it for Fin. She was definitely right! "One Year Old in a Flash" is perfect for Fin because Anna and I have a photography business. It just makes sense! Not to mention, the year did go by in a flash. I knew from the beginning that I needed Anna's help with the planning, and that was the best decision I made during all of this. She is much more organized than I am, and she's extremely creative. We are already partners in business, so bouncing ideas off of each other comes naturally to us and that is kind of how we planned this whole thing. We were constantly texting each other about different things we found online, or words we came up with for the food. The downside to Finley's birthday is that it comes a few weeks after Christmas. I knew that we needed to really get the major ideas planned before Christmas or else her birthday party would get lost in the mix of the holidays. The invitation was the first thing that needed to be done, so I went on Pinterest for ideas. I only found two birthday parties that used this same theme, and I took ideas from their invitations and made it my own. I created the invitation in Photoshop, saved it as a pdf, and went to Staples to have them printed off. Little did I know, it was not that easy. For some odd reason, Staples could not get my blue color printed correctly. (Oh yeah, we didn't go with yellow, pink, and aqua. We saw a birthday party that was aqua and red and fell in love with the boldness and contrast of the two colors.) The guy at Staples called 5 surrounding staples and none of them could get my colors right. So he called other print shops in Granbury. No luck. Finally, DAYS later, a local print shop employee recreated my entire invite to a T with a blue color that was almost right. I was so thrilled, I even looked past the fact the the "Y" in Finley was kind of cut off. :) Once the invites were out, we made sure that we had everything that needed to be ordered, ordered. Finleys onesie came from Etsy, her suspenders came from Etsy, the props for the photo booth came from Etsy, and the fabric for the backdrop for the photo booth came from etsy. The plates and cups came from Shop Sweet Lulu and her hat came from Baby Once. She had a pretty expensive little getup going, but we wanted her to look like a little press baby. We originally planned on having the party at Anna and Eddie's house, but about two weeks ahead of party time, the weather for January 14th said the low was in the 20s!! We had been planning on having the party kind of inside and outside, and that weather forecast squashed everything. We immediately changed the plan to the country club where I live, and that ended up being a great decision. They made the food and gave us a very large space for a very reasonable price. We probably would have spent more having it Anna's house anyway. Now fast forward to the actual day of the party. The weather was NOT in the 20s. It was a beautiful day, and we had a really great turn out. Anna took candids, the photo booth photos, and the pictures of the whole set up. I'm so thankful that she did all of that, because there is no way I could have done that and visited with people. The kiddos loved the photo booth, and their goodie bags. I ordered the little disguise glasses from Oriental Trading Company, and Hooper and I made the little mustache and lips suckers. (Just cut out foam paper and made a hole in the middle for the sucker.) There ended up being 20 kids at the party! And half of them were Finley's age or younger! It really was so much fun. I know that Finley had a great time, if you can't tell in the photos below! By the time the party planning and the party itself was over, it felt like we had planned a wedding. Seriously. I'm aware that Fin won't remember her first birthday party, but I sure will. And I've got the photos to show her just how much fun it was.


































, her suspenders came from Etsy