Hudson's 1st Birthday Party!

 

 

For Hudson's 1st birthday party, in my usual fashion, I went overboard but loved the way it turned out and we all had a wonderful time...well, except Hudson who was apparently coming down with a double ear infection unbeknownst to us.  

I didn't really want to do a theme for his party so we concentrated our decorating efforts around 4 colors - red, baby blue, yellow and brown.  These are the colors that his room is decorated in and I just love how they all look together...not your typical color combination!

Some of the kitchen cabinets.  I hot glued the dots to the jute and then taped the pictures.

Pictures and polka dots on the back door - attached with tiny glue dots.

At Kemper's 1st birthday party, I strung a clothesline around our dining room and displayed pictures of him throughout his first year of life.  We wanted to do the same for Hudson but instead of a clothesline, I hung pictures on the cabinets, the back door and on the mirror as you walk into our house.  It was so neat looking back through all of the pictures as we were hanging them.  He's changed so much but it's fun to see those same serious facial expressions remain the same throughout the year!

I saw this on Pinterest and loved how it looked in pictures so I decided to give it a shot to add some additional color to the kitchen.  Kemper was a big helper on this project.  We took streamers, twisted them and attached them to the pantry doors.  It was such a nice pop of color and we put his high chair in front of these doors when it was cake time!

Treat bags were hard because there was such a wide age range of kids coming to the party (8 months to 5 years!).  I ended up putting a sidewalk chalk buddy (love these for keeping hands clean of chalk), bubbles, a rubber ducky and a sheet of stickers in each bag.  I made a label in Photoshop and used my nifty circle cutter to cut them out.  A few hole punches into the brown paper bags then finished it off with red, yellow and blue yarn.  

I made Hudson's cake using the Wilton giant cupcake pan.  I ordered the pan specifically for Kemper's first birthday so thought it would be fitting to use it again for Hudson's party.  I chose a vanilla cake and tried my hand at homemade butter cream icing for his cake.  I thought it tasted delicious!

For the guests, we went with chocolate cupcakes.  I had good intentions of making enough butter cream icing for these but ended up running out of time so Betty Crocker stepped in to give me a hand! :)  I made the cupcake picks using Photoshop and then just hot glued them onto toothpicks!

The birthday boy before his party started!  He started out in a great mood but as the party wore on, he began to get more and more grumpy.  He may have been overwhelmed by the people and activity but ultimately, I think he was just starting to feel bad.

Mr. Serious

Family picture

Poor Hudson - he was just done with pictures.  Somebody save him!

With my sweet birthday boy.

All of the kiddos (well, minus the babies - Abigail, Harper and Ema)

Big brother helping Hudson out by blowing out the candle.

He didn't taste a single bite.  He barely even touched the cake. :(  Poor guy was definitely not acting like himself because he normally inhales anything you put in front of him.

He did share a bite with Mommy.  

We had a great time at the party and are so thankful for our friends who came to celebrate with us!  It was a nice day so the big kids played outside on the playset and the little ones played inside with the moms (and James!).  We had tacos, rice, chips, salsa and guacamole followed by cupcakes (which were a hit with the kid crowd of course).  A big thanks to all of our Army family who came to celebrate with us!