"Up" Birthday Party

Little J doesn't watch a lot of TV yet, but Jared and I went ahead and assigned him a "favorite movie."  We like to think we know him pretty well, so our choice was easy:  Up!

This movie captured our hearts (and makes me sob uncontrollably - Jared too!) and was an obvious pick for our Babe's first birthday party theme.

I wanted to keep things simple (and inexpensive) so I focused on the balloon motif as my decorating inspiration.  We bought roughly 100 balloons, and foregoing the expensive helium tank rental, blew them up ourselves.  Because they weren't the "floaty" kind of balloons without the helium, I fond some balloon sticks to keep them upright. This was a fun process for everyone (except our sensitive puppies) and got us really geared up for the big party!

 

I knew that the balloons wouldn't be quite enough to represent our movie theme, so we got to work recreating the beloved "Karl & Ellie" mailbox.  My full mailbox project can be found here.  With the addition of some travel-themed decorative elements, I had my cupcake display table!

These are my favorite cupcakes (Jared teases me for advertising these "made from scratch" yummies).  The full recipe can be found here.  They are delicious.  I'm not kidding.

This little "personal" cake was meant for Little J to consume/smash/smear/throw during his party, but I lost track of time... and my Peanut's little cake ended up getting eaten by Jared.  But that's fine - he earned it after all the help and support he gave me during the party-prep process.

This final project was my pride and joy.  My full tutorial (competing with the amazing Martha Stewart) can be found here.  I can't emphasize my self-pride enough on this one.  This was a tricky project for me.

This party was a blast.  I look forward to planning birthday parties for my little ones every year!

The birthday boy and his sweet Nana