Prepping for the First Birthday Party

I am a planner, a researcher, a super organized kinda gal. I have to say that since having a baby things have gotten crazier but I do my best to stay on top of my game. I planned my destination wedding all by myself. I planned a 10-country world tour for hubby and I all by myself. Easy peasy. But you know what is throwing me for a loop?? My baby's damn first birthday party!! HA!

One problem is Pinterest, and Facebook. They put so much freaking pressure on us to make the cutest most adorable and memorable party ever. You know what? It's just not freaking possible to live up to those kinda standards! Well, not for 99% of us anyway. Yeah, there is a new "1%" and they are the people who are pinned time and time again with their amazing decorations and kids storage ideas and photo ops. Ugh. Hate them. Down with the 1%!!!

I'll get off my soap box and instead talk about how the party prepping is going. First of all, I'm not in it alone, thank god!! We're doing a triple birthday party with 2 baby friends of ours - they all had their bdays between Christmas and New Year, so our theme, OF COURSE, is "Winter ONEderland". On the one hand, planning it with two other moms is cheaper and easier, it's also harder in some ways because you have to have decisions discussed and voted on, and divvying up tasks is a task all on its own! LOL! But, getting together to work on the crafts and stuff is a blast, once we get over the stress of planning and being surrounded by squealing or tantruming toddlers!!

Out little ones romping around while we work!

This week we worked on a few big items: the snowflake pom poms, the birthday banner, and our photo doilie display!

I got the snowflake pom poms from a great Etsy shop called The Shower Planner (like them on Facebook, check out their blog, and follow them on Pinterest!). Everyone knows those cute pom poms, you see them at baby showers and stuff like that. Sure, they're a pain in the butt to make, but they are great cheap decorations. Well, PHC sells those and they come with these awesome snowflakes that hang down from them!! They were not too tough to put together and came out really cute!

The pom poms come in folded paper (see above) with instructions on how to unfold and fluff them out (final pom pom shown above). Then you tie on the cute sparkly snowflake with some clear fishing line, also provided in the set. Super easy and adorable!

We were each frustrated at the start of unfolding the pom poms, but were so proud of our work when we finished all 6! Yay!! Crazy mommies... I'm the especially crazy one in the middle ;)

The final product - so cute! We'll hang 6 of these in the party room for our Winter ONEderland!

Next we worked on the birthday banner, which we got from Paper Heart Company (like them on Facebook!). They have digital designs which they can personalize, and then you print then, cut them out, hole punch them, and string them together... a bit of work on your end, but they come out great!

Mamas working hard cutting out our banner. PSA: we do not advise using scissors with babies in lap, but desperate times call for desperate measures!

Doing our best to string the banner together with 3 babies running amok!

We also worked on a project for highlighting each month of our babies' first year. We thought doilies worked with our theme, so decided to throw photos on doilies and string them together...

The big day is this Sunday, so will definitely do a post afterwards with photos of how everything looked set-up (we have FIFTEEN minutes to set up the room... WHAT THE EF GYMBOREE!?!?!?! Grrrrr that is probably where 95% of our stress lies...). Wish us luck! Hopefully we can do what we can do and then just have FUN at the party!!

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