Celebrating Our Little Pumpkin

I love first birthday parties, and I know and will admit that they are more for the parents than the babies, but the guest of honor is always so cute at a first birthday party!  There are so many accomplishments in that first year for both the little one and his/her parents, and in a way, it's like they're graduating from being that little baby to a big baby precious little pre-toddler!  

Jake made planning his first birthday so easy.  From the day I found out I was pregnant with him and counted nine months ahead, I knew we were having an October baby.  He was our little pumpkin from the very start, so what better way to celebrate his first birthday than with a pumpkin theme!  Out of all the parties I've planned (not that many honestly, but still enough for this statement to be somewhat meaningful), this was my favorite.  So, let's get going with the details!

First off, the invitation was adorable!  My friend Jesse made it for me.  You're going to have to take my word for the adorableness of it because I don't have a picture to post, but trust me when I say it was so cute!  The wording for it was "Load up the pumpkins and jump in the hay, it's time to celebrate Jake's first birthday!"

Now to the food...

I am kind of weird and like for my food to somewhat go along with the colors for the party, which were orange, green, and brown for this party (sounds pretty, huh?!).  I don't think I really even thought about the food colors going along with the theme this time until I'd already made the menu, strangely enough.  Karl and Cooper cleaned out the inside of two small/medium pumpkins for me to use as dip holders.  The first one had Ranch Dip (1 packet of Ranch dip mix and 16 oz of sour cream mixed together) in it, and we had celery and carrot sticks to go with it.  The other one had Pumpkin Fluff Dip in it, and we had cinnamon pita chips and green apples to go with it (I actually preferred the green apples with it, and I don't typically like green apples).  We also had a large chicken nugget tray from Chick Fil A, pretzels, and Cheez-Its to snack on.  For dessert, we had pumpkin-shaped cookies from Fresh Market and mini-pumpkin cupcakes with an orange cream cheese icing (which turned out really delicious, despite how odd it sounds; I tripled the icing recipe since I was piping it on the cupcakes).  To drink, we had juice boxes and sweet tea.  

Decorating with this theme was so easy and so fun.  Because of where I hung Jake's one year photo banner (a picture of him from each month this year), you can't see how cute it is, but once again, trust me.  I got pumpkin cut-outs from Hobby Lobby and strung them on thin twine.  Throw in small pumpkins, a couple hay stacks, and just the same ol' fall decorations I put out every year, and we were set!

We had the party from 11:00-12:30 on a Saturday, which is risky during football season.  Luckily the only game on that anyone cared about was the Georgia game, and we had that on the tv.  I was so proud of all the guys there because I didn't hear any grumbling about how this was taking away from their football day!  We opened presents while most of the children played on the deck or in the front yard.  Jake got some great little toys, but the little football he got was his definite favorite.  As I looked through pictures that night, I giggled at how he didn't let go of that football and wasn't interested in any other presents!

Everyone was already starting to nibble by the time we got done with gifts, so we moved on to the smash cake (the best part of a one year old party)!  I couldn't wait to see Jake's reaction because he has a major sweet tooth!  Cooper was hilarious with his smash cake and literally smashed his face right in when he realized he could eat it faster that way.  Jake, well, he didn't have that same reaction.

I learned that day that Jake doesn't like getting his hands dirty.  I made the mistake of kind of pushing his hand down in the icing some, and that really stressed him out.  He kept holding his hand out for me to clean.  And when I didn't, he started to cry.  The smash cake was a definite bust with Jake!

The part of the party I was most excited about was the hayride to our makeshift pumpkin patch!  Karl had borrowed a trailer from a friend and got hay to go around the edge for seating.  We got all the little ones and some parents loaded on, and Karl drove us around the neighborhood to the end of the street, which is just flat and grassy lots that haven't been built on yet.  We had put out pumpkins (smallish-medium sized) with Pumpkin Patch Pop-Rocks candy tied to the stems as the party favor.

When we got back to the house, everyone played and ate a little more.  It was such a fun day of celebrating out precious little pumpkin with so many wonderful friends.  It just warms your heart when everyone comes together to celebrate your child.

Donielle, Jennifer, and I lived together our senior year of college, and we all had a baby within the past year.  Actually, I had Jake in October, and then they both had their baby girls at the beginning of June, but it's still fun to have little ones close in age!