Happy Friday! And, Happy first day of Fall! I hope everyone's enjoying the change in the weather. We're having cooler weather in Los Angeles and I'm LOVING it!!! Fall is my favorite season, wish it stayed year-round. In order to welcome Fall and everything Fall related, I'm going to say goodby to Summer by sharing all the details from Katherine's First Birthday celebration, a tropical theme. I tend to go over the top with my kids' birthdays and totally understand they may have no recollection of their birthday parties but it's one thing that I enjoy doing is party planning and letting my creative side take over, especially for my little rugrats. A couple of months leading up to any party planning, you'll find me pinning on Pinterest day and night (LOL) and then putting together the supplies to purchase and/or make.

I think our Hawaii trip in May had something to do with Katherine's birthday theme. I wanted to continue the tropical vibe and bring it back to LA so I decided to go with that for her First Birthday theme. I focused on flamingos, tropical fruits and trees. And, since we have a pool, I turned it into a tropical pool party. I mean it was three digits that weekend, I had to. So, my goal was to fill up the pool with lots of floaties (flamingos, pineapple, banana, to name a few). And, the colors naturally ended up being mostly hot pink and green throughout the entire party. However, I did mix in lots of whites to keep things clean and crisp.

I always start my party planning from the entrance where the guests arrive in from and start my way in, in this case, it was our side yard. I had seen a vinyl welcome sign on Pinterest that I thought would be perfect to make. With my Silhouette Cameo, a piece of acrylic sheet and some vinyl, I made the welcome sign (as well as the "Let's Get Flocked Up" for the adults drinks table - see below). On the entrance table, along with the welcome sign, I had the quilt fabric squares for the "guestbook", fabric pens and the framed instructions. And, my sweet mom is going to make the quilt for Katherine as a keepsake from her first birthday celebration. As well on that table was Katherine's 12 monthly photos on a hoop that I made, in which I had seen on Pinterest as well and loved the idea. I spray painted a hula hoop in gold and wrapped three columns of ribbon for the 12 monthly photos, in which I had them printed at Costco in 5 x 5 squares with white border around them and glued them onto the jute ribbons. With some greenery on the sides, I thought it turned out absolutely adorable. I had lots of fun taking her monthly photos and was sad when we hit the 12th month.

Walking past the entrance table through our side yard, you'll walk into the backyard. The pool was filled with floaties, then all the way back in the pergola area, I set up a crafts station for the little guests. With a piece of 4 feet wide x 8 feet long wood from Home Depot sitting on top of a few cinder blocks, I created the low table with some cozy blankets and pillows for the kids to sit on while they got their crafts on. The first craft was jewelry making with wooden geometric beads, some tassels, and cording. And, the second craft was yarn art with some twigs, pipe cleaners, and of course yarn in different colors. The kids had a blast making these after they were done with the pool. For most of my parties, I tend to have games with prizes or crafts for the tiny guests, instead of goodie bags which I personally don't like. Most of the time, they're filled with junk that get thrown away, or with artificial candies that I don't want my kids eating and thus don't want to offer myself.

As for the games, I included some hula hoops, bubble wands, two bowling areas with pineapples as the pins and coconuts as the bowling balls. Also, I used a few of the flamingos from the yard to play ring toss. My amazing and talented husband also made a life-sized Jenga game. And, the round kiddie pool was meant for the little babes that were a year-old or so, if the parents did not wish to go in the big pool, they could have them play in that instead.

That pretty much sums up all the big details of Katherine's First Birthday party. We had a taco cart catering that was AHH-MAZING! And, delicious hazelnut crunch naked cake with some "pineapple" donuts, and homemade desserts. I could not have imagined Katherine's First Birthday in any other way. It was exactly how I had planned it. Katherine had a great time in the pool and even more fun playing with her cake. She was in a very happy mood and did not even want to nap. It's like she knew it was her party and could do whatever she wanted to do. LOL. I look forward to showing them all the pictures and videos from all their parties when they are older. I hope they can appreciate the love and hard work gone into every detail. Or, they can always come to this blog and see/read through the posts - HAHA.

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As always, thanks for following along!

xoxo,

Salpie

Katherine's Tropical First Birthday