Bright as the sun...

The theme for Amelia's party was based on the phrase from her invitations: "Bright as the sun, Amelia Grace is turning 1!" We had a wonderful day filled with friends and family and sunshine (hot sunshine!)

But I was inspired by a recent vacation post from my friend Lacey over at Life of Lacey - who wants to hear all of the fun details about the awesome party I threw? Wouldn't you rather hear about the things that DIDN'T go as planned? Of course you would.

1. The Slideshow
I was determined to create an awesome video full of clips and pictures from Amelia's first year of life. I spent countless hours compiling, editing and arranging the slideshow...only to realize the day before that I had no way to show it. You see, we don't have a laptop, nor a DVD burner, or actually a DVD player. We hardly ever watch movies at home, so all we have is a Playstation 2.

So the morning of the party, I was frantically trying to figure out a way to display the fruits of my labor (pun intended). As it turned out, we do have a DVD burner (who knew?!) so my kind brother-in-law brought me a couple of blank DVDs to burn the slideshow. While doing so, I noticed a blank spot on the saved movie. Thought I fixed it. Nope. Oh well. Burned the DVD. What's that? Burned DVDs won't play in our Playstation? Sweet.

I drove like a bat out of you-know-where to BIL and SIL's house a few blocks away to try out their DVD player. Score! It worked. So I rushed back home with the DVD player only to find out we didn't have the necessary cables to hook it up. Eventually MIL brought the cable and the day was saved.

The slideshow in all of its glory (which I can't get to embed at the moment. See! My problems continue). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJKBfHgXJd0

2. The Monthly Pictures
I also had grand ideas to display Amelia's monthly pictures on the doors to our family room. I found cute little wooden sunshine frames (ok, really I think they were flowers) on clearance at Walmart before I had this project in mind, then decided they would be perfect. Except I only had 10 of them. So I went back and scavenged around the bins where I'd found them, and alas, there were no more. So I had to make do with other flowers. All of which I spray painted and printed numbers for.

THEN I had to figure out how to attach them to the doors. I ended up using craft wire, but it took far longer than I anticipated. The end result:

 

And the big picture

 

 

3. The Food

I made rainbow fruit skewers, buffalo chicken taquitos, and pizza roll ups (among other things), all inspired by Pinterest. Due to a recent outbreak of diseased melons, I had to substitute mandarin oranges for the cantaloupe. The pizza thingies charred on the bottoms (thanks to my awesome mom for cutting that part off, they were still delicious!). And ultimately we ran out of food, but everyone got to go through for at least one plate! (There were plenty of cupcakes though. I had about two dozen more behind the scenes.)

 

4. The Nap

Or the lack thereof. Not that she is ever a stellar napper, but apparently Miss Amelia was so excited for her birthday that she took one whopping 15 minute nap in the late morning. Luckily no major meltdowns!

 

5. The Cake

The cake was wonderful and adorable. But the cake eater, who clearly must not take after her mother, wanted nothing to do with it. Smash cake? No siree. Poke cake maybe. But she did happily feed pieces of it to Mommy. Oh, and I forgot to buy ice cream. Now there's a phrase you won't hear me utter often!

 

 

 

But all in all Amelia's day really was a wonderful success. I was one exhausted mama, but I was so happy to create a special day for my wonderful girl! I can't believe she is already 1!

 

Playing with her cousin

 

 

 Not impressed with the cake

Opening presents with Mommy