A Ton of Fun

Ellie is One!

Everything about Eloise seems fast. She grows fast, learns fast, and time with her is going by way too fast! I should expect each new milestones well in advance considering it's the second time around, but instead they knock me completely off guard. I still expect her to be my little baby. Needless to say, I wasn't ready for her to turn one and I definitely wasn't ready for a party. But we got it together and it was a TON of FUN!

Theme
Elephants: We call her Ellie as often as Eloise and elephants have kind of been her thing.
Purple: She looks so good in purple. It is her color! And green and gray were good accents.
Carnival: Along with the elephants I wanted a subtle carnival feel, rather than circus or jungle.

Invitations
I love making my own invitations. I got the wording from Pinterest and designed the rest.

Decorations

Decorations were as simple as a little bunting and a Happy Birthday garland. I had more ideas but ran out of time.

Time Capsule

A tradition we hope to do with all of our kids is to start a time capsule on their first birthday to be opened on their 18th birthday. In Ellie's time capsule we included things like her blessing shoes, ultrasound pics, outfit we brought her home in, birth announcement, birthday invitation, the used candle from later on, coins with her birth year, and the book that gave us the idea for her name. Then we had everyone write her note.

Party Time

Olivia and Eloise LOVE their cousins!

Activities

Elephant Trunk Craft
I found this cute craft on a preschool blog and thought it would be fun. It was! I just printed 2 to a page and cut them out (including the hole for the nose).
 elephant finger puppet  

 

Button Toss
I saved some baby food jars and covered them in Washi tape and then the kids tried different ways to get the button in the jars, tossing, dropping, etc. Simple but entertaining.

Video
We're starting to make a lot of First Birthday Traditions, which I love. But I just hope we can keep up with them all. One of those traditions is making a video compilation of all the videos we've taken the first year. Richard did Olivia's and I took on the challenge to make one for Eloise. It turned out pretty good, considering I was learning the program as I went along. Even though it's time consuming and at times, all out stressful, I'm glad we do it because we would never watch some of these video clips on their own. But this way they are all in one place. And the first birthday party gives us a deadline.

Sweets for the Sweet

After the activities and watching the video, we ate. Going with the carnival idea, we had popcorn, mini caramel apples, grape and lime licorice, and candy. And going along with elephants we had peanuts, un-shelled. For the beverage I found some Jolly Rancher green apple singles to go packets for water bottles. It was an easy way for guests to choose water or punch.

Cake

I can't get over the cake! My amazing Sis-in-law, Connie, made it and it was exactly what I wanted. From the colors to the adorable bunting, it was perfect! Such talent! Thank you, Connie!!!

 

She also made a smash cake, which was, shall we say, the icing on the cake to the whole party! And I wasn't even planning on having one.

 

Cake Smash

All clean. But not for long!

Eloise had some help from big sister blowing out the candle and then got right to work on the cake.

A cake was never destroyed so fast!

Or so thoroughly!

Her hair was CAKED by the end!

Presents
Eloise received some great books, toys and clothes. Thanks everyone for all the awesome gifts!

Pooped from all the partying!

Happy Birthday, Sweet Eloise! It was so fun to celebrate you!