look whooooo's turning one!

although cade was quick to point out that violet would never remember any part of her first birthday, i still insisted we have a big ol' bash for the cutie. we invited over all of vi's cousins- all 29 of them- for the party. it was a blast! the only downer for the day was that violet was terribly sick. her nose was a leaky faucet and her eyes were swollen and red. she tried to laugh and play with her cousins but she just wasn't her happy self. so sad- but her cousins sure had a ton of fun! here are the party essentials....

menu:
hot dog bar
finger foods galore
yummy food that all the guests brought (thanks!)
and owl cupcakes - i ran out of brown m&ms but they still turned out cute.

the kiddos were nice to take a hot dog break and pose with one finger up for violet's first birthday.


activities
bounce house for the little tykes
movies in the man cave for the older gals
making owl headbands (you can see mandy's model perched on her head. she was great to organize all this for me- and the kids looked so cute!)

and a pinata


the pinata and i had a love/hate relationship. when i decided to make the pinata instead of buy one- i was imagining how cute and fuzzy i could make it look if i did it all myself. i was in love the idea i had in my head so i eagerly got made the shell and shape. that turned out to be the easy part. next, i cut a zillion purple squares of crepe paper and started "fuzzing." i really wanted the pinata to have dimension and to look fuzzy so i wrapped a square of crepe paper around the end of a marker and glued it onto the shell piece by piece. well... HOURS later cade and i found that we were making little progress. we were ready to be done but we still had a large section of purple and we hadn't even started the yellow or pink sections! after a lackluster pep talk, i convinced cade to help finish fuzzing the purple and then we would find another method for the belly and wings. we slapped pink and yellow paper on and walked away from the project vowing to just buy the dang pinata next time. loved the idea... hated the work.
we stuffed the owl full of all the treasures we could find: candy, pennies, stickers, warm fuzzies and even instant ramen. the kids loved it- even if i shuddered as i watched my hours of manual labor be crushed in minutes.

finally,
cake and presents
being sick, she wasn't all that ready to dive into a slab of chocolate cake- so she tenderly picked at it and sucked the frosting from her dainty fingers. it was a very ladylike approach at devouring a cake.


vi had no shortage of helpers when it came time to open her presents. she was spoiled rotten with all sorts of goodies.... but you only turn one once, so i allowed it!


we had such a fun time and thank all of our guests for coming out to celebrate. violet has been such a joy to cade and i. we sit and laugh at all her personality and spunk while wondering at what life was like without her. we truly are blessed to have such a beautiful, happy baby and we are already starting on the pinata for her second birthday. she deserves it!