Happy Birthday Sara!

Really? I mean are you sure? It’s already nine days since my lil girl turned ONE! And I will have to wait for ONE whole year to plan her 2^nd birthday party :) Alright, I will wait patiently.

Today I am sharing with you some snippets from Sara’s 1^st birthday! Ever since she came into my life, I have been baking a cake for her every 31^st or 30^th (28^th in Feb :)) as the case may be to celebrate her monthly milestones. So you can imagine my excitement for her Big Day :)

Of course she had a very, very Pink birthday. I put my heart into planning this one and Sara and all of us had a great time! I hope you have a great time going through this very detailed post as well.

The party had to be at home (where she is most comfortable), between 4-6pm, (when she is active and fresh after her nap) and the guest list had to be small (I didn't want to intimidate her with 100 new faces). So she was surrounded by family and close friends and was a very happy birthday girl.

For my baby girl there had to be PINK, there had to be BLING and there had to be lots of DOTS! So I used lots of shades of pink paper, lots of shimmery sequins and beads and circles everywhere.

The Invite

For this I used my favorite font Mistral for the “1” on the card. And filled it up with several pink dots punched out of handmade paper and circular pink sequins. It was laborious but worth the final product.

The inside of the card also had two circles carrying the birthday verse and other details.

A polka dotted ribbon bow and pink beads completed it.

The Thank you Card

We sent these out after the party. It was a simple card carrying only two words “Thank You” which were painted by hand and once again a ribbon and beads tied it up all together.

The Big One

This was for the main door. I loved the texture of the wrinkly paper and the baby pink color. I used the same font Mistral and cut it out by hand. Then punched several holes all along the border.

Polka dot ribbon through those holes, lots of sequins and circular tags later it was on our front door.

Other Décor elements

For one of our walls I wanted to do one big piece that looked girly and arty at the same time. So I cut out several circles of different sizes. On some were glued sequins, on some beads, some had ribbons. And the wall décor was ready.

And there was a wishing tree.

This was made with an empty biscuit tin and some branches that I picked up from the street. The branches were painted silver and the tin was done up once again with layers of paper and few sequins.

Lots of handmade circular wishing cards and everyone was ready to wish the birthday girl years of good health and naughty times ahead.

A pink mobile

For this I followed the tutorial here, and made a pink mobile. The paper ornaments for the mobile were in different sizes and colors and Sara had fun playing with them ( As you can see from the pic;)). Finally tied it up with twine to an old silver circular frame I had.

Flowers & Balloons

Of course the home had to be filled up with pink flowers. For this a number of ice buckets with polka dotted ribbon tied around them dressed up as vases. I also used lots of baby food jars for baby breath as well.

And there were loads and loads of baby pink balloons and pink polka dot balloons as well.

Table Decor

Food placards and flowers made it all look pink. For the placards, I cut out several circles and wrote out the name of the dishes in silver. A bow in front and a bamboo stick behind and they were ready to be put inside the baby food bottles.

There was the polka dot pink cake and chicken and mushroom-onion quiche that I ordered. We had Alpenliebe strawberry candy (Yes, only because it’s pink and white). I made the rest at home, a chocolate trifle pudding, cocktail sticks, corn salad, chicken ham sandwiches, cabbage & carrot sandwiches, chicken nuggets, corn nuggets and cheese balls.

The food was placed on a combination of bowls, inverted platters and some on inverted cake tins (that I painted in two shades of pink) to give the table a certain dimension. More on these inverted cake tins tomorrow.

Party Favors

These were homemade chocolates (Strawberry, Mixed nuts & Butterscotch ) To pack them pretty, two large squares were cut and I tore them up slightly for the border and sewed the chocolates in them. Here’s how the final packing looked like.

Phew, a long post! I had a beautiful time making everything from scratch with my paws for the apple of my eye and I really, really wish her all the happiness in the world. Happy birthday Sara!

Images : Personal Album