Play ball!

It's hard to believe that Jake's first birthday party came and went, but I do believe we will deem it a success!  We had such a great time having friends over and celebrating our little boy and he made out like a bandit!  As my husband put it, it was the best first birthday party he's ever been to!  I'm with him on that one... even if it's the only first birthday party we've ever been to!  Although I will admit, it was so nice to put my party-planning skills back into action again... it's been too long!  I used to plan events for a living, and now that my career has me working on the sales side instead of the planning side, I don't get to participate in the fun, creative process anymore.  I think I'll have to find more reasons to have parties from here on out!  But enough about me, here's how we celebrated Jake!

This is the invitation that my uber-talented sister, Mindy, created for us!  It was even perforated like a real event ticket would be!  I am happy to see her putting her artistic talent to work and she is starting a business doing just this kind of thing... custom invitations and theme party work!  We could not have been happier with how they turned out (and I'm not just saying that because she's my sister!):

She also created other logos for us to use, too.  You can't really tell in the picture below, but she made a J in a baseball diamond seen in the upper left-hand corner of this sign.  I made signs like this all over the house- "Player Parking" in the driveway, "Locker Room" for the bathroom, "Dugout" for the screened-in porch, "Field Access" for the door to the backyard, "Club Seating" for the living room, and "Concession Stand" for the kitchen.  Sadly, I only snapped a picture of this one... how did that happen?

And then of course I used my "I-pretend-to-be-crafty-but-I'm-really-not" skills to make some custom decor for my little guy:

Now for the important part... the food!  I'm incredibly disappointed in myself for not taking a picture of the spread in the kitchen.  We had a concession stand complete with a hot-dog and nacho machine!  Yum!  Our hot dog bar was complete with onions, relish, sourkraut, and ketchup and mustard and there were jalapenos for the nachos of course!  Jake's smash cake and the cupcakes (chocolate, yellow, and chocolate chip) for everyone else were displayed on the dining room table:

And here is the contribution from my other sister, Angie!  THANK YOU for icing all of the baseballs!  I think we had about 48 cupcakes total and she probably iced 40 of them... it would've been a long night without her help and I loved how they turned out!  I did the J's mainly because we had so much leftover green and blue icing, but they ended up matching the little logos my sister had made.

And then for Jake's cake... I must say, I am quite proud of it!  A few weeks before I had taken a cake decorating class from a super-talented friend who runs her own cake business, so I got a bit ambitious after that.  It certainly wasn't perfect, but for my first try I was quite pleased... especially if you saw it before I had to fix it... but that's another story entirely!  As a sidenote I have to add that when I was growing up, my mom made just about every birthday cake and always did a fantastic job.  It was so important to me to carry that on and do the same for my kids.  Josh thought I was a bit crazy at first, but really liked the outcome.  And it's like I told him... this one was the first birthday cake so just imagine how amazing his 18th birthday cake is going to look!

And we had ZERO complaints from the little man... he loved every. last. bite.

As for presents, I'm telling you, it was like Christmas here!  My husband could not resist getting this for the Jakester... his first power wheels!  He still likes to push it more than he likes to ride on it, but I think Josh is living vicariously through Jake so everyone wins!  Besides, doesn't he look like the cutest little redneck baby ever???

When I started this blog, I imagined that I would do these DIY posts with beautiful photos of every detail of every event.  After this party, I realized that I'm just not that mom!  I would love to have more photos of the signs I made and the concession stand set-up complete with close-ups of hot dogs roasting, but I found myself setting the camera down more than I picked it up.  Because at the end of the day I really just enjoyed that day... every minute of it.  This is the only first birthday party he's ever going to have (sniff, sniff!) so I'm okay with not quite being the blogger that I always imagined I'd be.  It's nice to look back and just know that I was busy being the mom that I've always wanted to be.  I think Jake's okay with that, too.

Hope you enjoyed our party as much as we did.  Now the questions is how we're ever going to top it next year!  I think I have plenty of time to figure that one out!