The Boy’s First Birthday:: Brought to you by Pinterest, procrastination, and booze.

For The Boy’s first birthday, I knew he wasn’t going to remember it.

While I was compelled to rock a nerdy Star Wars theme, I opted to continue his woodland-animals theme that began with creating his nursery set.

At the time when I made his nursery set in November 2010, I had THE hardest time sourcing fabric for–there was NO woodland animal-themed fabric at that time. Now? It’s all over the place. Can I call myself a trendsetter now? Hey, where are you going?

I generally bite off more than I can chew in the DIY department for parties. Thankfully, I get enough done to where it still looks halfway decent, but internally, I’m groaning over the three projects I started and ran out of time to finish. No one, other than Rob, is usually the wiser.

Then came Pinterest.

That goddamned website upped the ante with everything. It’s like they combined Martha Stewart, Apartment Therapy, and all the fantastic bloggers all into one overachieving, brilliant, yet smug entity.

It cannot be stopped.

And of course, I’m hooked. And yes, I got a lot of the ideas for The Boy’s birthday from Pinterest.

The one thing they don’t warn you is if the pin can really be done just like the photo shown.

Case in point: Apple Pie Breakfast. It’s supposed to be steel-cut oats, apples, apple juice, cinnamon, and water in a Crock Pot. Combine, let cook overnight, and BAM! Amazing, apple-pie-tasting breakfast. Since I’m a sucker for apple pie, I had to try it…it was edible, but I wasn’t a fan.

I’m usually the dumbass who experiments with new recipes before a big event. But I have never used a recipe from Pinterest, so now I’ll just stick with my trusted recipe websites for that. Thanks for ruining Father’s Day, Pinterest.

Jerkwad.

I did try a new, non-Pinterest recipe for The Boy’s birthday: Blueberry Lemon cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese frosting. Granted, I tweaked it a lot, and subbed raspberries for the blueberries, but they turned out AMAZING. Like, they turned out to be my favorite cupcake. The Boy liked them, too.

He also refused to use his hands when eating said cupcake. I can relate. Hey, to each their own, even if they’re only one year old.

I experimented with decorations for the cupcakes. Both these items were created at like 2am the night before the party. Yes, I am aware I am completely insane.

DIY Item 1: Cupcake wrappers. I DID find this on Pinterest, and found it to be incorrect. Either my cupcake tins are super shallow, or the template for the cupcake wrappers is wrong. WRONG! After tracing 48 of those fuckers, cutting them out, I didn’t realize they were too big until it was hours before the party, which resulted in me frantically trimming 48 fucking cupcake wrappers, only to run out of time and delegate it to my future sister-in-law (thank you, Kenzi!!).

Rule Number One to Party Planning: if someone asks to help or bring anything, take them up on it! Having a child makes party prep even more difficult. I don’t know what I would have done without my stepmom Jan or my future sister-in-law. Probably curled up on the floor of my kitchen, weeping into my apron, that’s what.

DIY Item 2: Cupcake Toppers. Now, I did see this on Pinterest, but I totally made these my own. I wish I had my Cricut unburied from the mess that is my craft studio, for cutting a ton of circles would have been easier if I had just used it.

They turned out pretty flippin’ cute if you ask me. The other flavor is a Devil’s Food Chocolate cupcake with a Chocolate Ganache frosting.

People make a big deal out of ganache, as if it were hard to make. It’s not. You just have to be up on it. I forgot how long this frosting takes to set up, so I was feverishly waiting on it to set up in the fridge as guests were already arriving! It’s okay; at our Annual Ugly Sweater party, my guests are used to me greeting them from the kitchen.

DIY Item 3: Tissue paper pom-poms. The pin I had saved did me NO good, so google and Martha Stewart showed me the way. I would have made more, but I ran out of tissue. Each pom takes eight sheets of tissue, and I did not buy enough.

While I could have made his invitations, banner, etc., I have finally come to the conclusion that I would be rather spending the time with The Boy instead of fretting about adhesive for his invitations. Plus, I got everything (including the custom banner) for cheap online!

Here are some other nifty things I did for the party:

Gift table with pretty streamer work.

Completely unnecessary and took a flipping long time, but it looked cute in the end!

Rainbow fruit trays and ombre veggie tray.

I saw these on Pinterest, but I didn’t realize how little fruits/veggies you needed for each color…so I ended up with TWO fruit trays and a ton of extra veggies to snack on for a week afterward! WIN!

The booze was outside–what? I know it’s a kid’s birthday party, but you gotta have booze. It is fitting because our baby shower turned into a beer pong party…I obviously didn’t participate, but that’s the crowd we run with.

Little one’s high chair ready to have frosting smeared all over it. Actually, he did very well. He refused to eat the cupcake with his hands, so it was only his face that took the bulk of the mess.

The Boy. His onesie was actually a plain white one from Carter’s, and I found a super cute (flocked!) iron-on from s.e.i. BAM! It totally makes up for me not buying/making those adorable month stickers to slap on a onesie for photo ops (you know, like 1 month, 2 month, etc.). I did take photos at each age milestone, but with no cute indicators of his age.

Speaking of photo ops…

For 15 bucks, the custom banner was worth every penny. We got photos of The Boy with Rob and me, and all the grandparents got their shot with the Birthday Boy.

Now if I could just sit for a moment and actually SEND those photos…