Elliott turns 1

When I was looking for ideas for Elliott's first birthday on a bunch of my favorite bloggers sites, I ran across a night owl night club themed party and fell in love. I love owls, they're very 'in' right now...especially post Elliott's party when I no longer need owl related decorations, fabrics, and things. Since our daughter is up late anyways, we decided to make her party an evening event (summer in Texas is a little less miserable at night too). I found a cute fabric at Hobby Lobby with owls in red, pink, lavender, blue, and green on a black background and used that as my jumping off point. Here is the invitation I designed:

I spent a couple of weeks making the rest of the decorations for her party...a few felt owl balls hung from the ceiling, scrapbook paper garlands, mantle and highchair tutu's, birthday banner...etc.  I hate bringing balloons home from party stores, so I rented a helium tank (only $50) and inflated a bunch of balloons in all the party colors. We had 2 card tables set up outside with coordinating fabrics, we had our deck decorated like a bed with blanket and pillows, our favorite photographers (Nine Photography) put up a photo booth area for us using a great vintage quilt as the backdrop.  

Since we planned an evening event, we knew we needed to provide food for everyone (and not just typical party appetizers).  We went with a Build Your Own Pizza Bar and a Build Your Own Icecream Sundae Bar. Both were big hits, and my husband was a good sport about slaving over the grill cooking everyone's pizzas.

For party favors, I had stickers made that said "sweet dreams" for the older kids, and books custom made with pictures of the kids as the animals in the story.

And here is our Birthday Girl!