12 Months - Part 2 (A Party)

It would be my dream come true (and I do mean, my dream come true) to have one of those party blogs where all the pictures of all the little details are in perfect focus and the whole thing looks like it is straight out of a Martha Stewart magazine. Here's how I am making this happen. First, we were given a professional photography gift certificate back when Ashton was born and I had decided to save it for his one year portraits. Then, when we started to plan his birthday party, I thought BINGO! Have them come take his pictures and also snap some party shots before they leave. A little two-for-one if you will.  And so they did just that. Great! But what I didn't count on was how long it takes for professional photographers to post the pictures they take and right now I have been told it will be another couple of weeks. Well, A New Nill must go on! What follows are my own (and friends and family members') totally amateur, decidedly un-Martha-Stewart-blog-like pictures from Ashton's first birthday party last Sunday. A poor man's Real Simple or any other very nice living magazine, truly. But, as I believe is true in life for just about everything, you do the best you can with what you've got.

So here we go. First, you should know that this party started out as a cowboy theme. That was the theme for Jason's first birthday party 35 years ago and we thought it would be cute to continue the tradition. Here was the invite:

I immediately got to work on the decorations- I made bunting flags out of scrapbook paper, a giant #1, a banner, the favors, signs, and centerpieces, accented it all with rope and I ordered tables and chairs and red checkered linens. After weeks of thinking about everything, my brother Erik came to visit the day before and we were casually discussing the party. "So how exactly is this cowboy and not, ummm, barnyard?" he asked. I froze. Omg. It WAS barnyard. Besides a couple of sheriff's badges I had glued on some mason jars, there was not one cowboy hat or anything pertaining to horses except a bale of fake hay. In fact, the predominant patterns were cow print and bandannas, so it wasn't even barnyard because there were no animals!! Truly, what kind of party was I throwing here?? Martha would have been so disappointed. At the end of the day, I settled on "western". Without further ado, here are pictures of Ashton's WESTERN birthday party.

We had two main drinks: Six-shooter Sweet Tea (regular iced tea) and Lasso'd Lemonade (definitely spiked and re-named from Grandma's usual Laidback Lemonade (pink Countrytime mix and Southern Comfort)).

Here's the saloon in all its glory (next to the chuckwagon table, which was obviously for food :))

Those coolers were painted with cow spots by none other than my amazing husband (quick shout out to him: Thank you for the many, many miles you drove the day before the party in order to find me the straw that I absolutely HAD to have to sprinkle on the driveway for decoration. The straw that I decided not to use in the end. Love you honey.).

  

We decided it would be nice to warn people about the Southern Comfort as it was completely undetectable taste-wise, so here is me making a note on the sign:

Here's Ashton testing out the corral that was built for all the babies

The favor table. I made s'mores on sticks for the grown-ups and the babies each got a little board book of "Cowboy Small" by Lois Lenski

Other detail shots

After the party got started, the cameras were put away for the most part but I did get a couple including an aerial view

The cake

The aftermath

Now, this cake was vegan due to Ashton's egg allergy. Whole Foods clearly substituted butter and eggs with oil and extra sugar and let me tell you, it was A-mazing. Like, so good. Dense and sweet... It was really important to me that Ashton be able to eat his own birthday cake and I was so happy with it. Honestly you'd never know it was vegan!

To wrap up, having family and friends surrounding him and singing Happy Birthday was one of my best moments of this past year. To everyone that was there, I am so grateful you came. And to those that couldn't be, we were thinking of you and counting our blessings that, present or not, this little boy has so much love in his life. Because really, besides a proper cowboy, er, barnyard, er, western themed party, what else is there. xoxo