This time last year I was put on bedrest in preparation for George’s arrival.

Now in two weeks, George will no longer be a baby.

What the heck? How is he a year old?

While I am trying not to get emotional about the fact that this year just flew by, there are moments where I am just overcome with tears of sadness, joy, fear…all of it.

But the joy is getting to celebrate this cutie:  the life he has lived so far and what is yet to come for him.

And I think that is what birthdays are all about.

I am one of those people that started planning his party once he was born. (And yes I already have his 2nd birthday planned in my head.) It’s just the creative planner in me that I just gets so excited about ideas! Judge me if you will. I will be over here enjoying the hotdogs at my kid’s birthday.

Luckily my sister-in-law is a party planner, and we jumped on the party planning bus together. She is helping bring life to some of the ideas. We have had a lot of fun coming up with things for his…(ready for it)

Baseball Themed Party!

I am sure there are no surprises there.

Birthdays are a big deal for me, and I want my kids to feel special and surrounded by the people they love on their day.

So we are starting this first one off with a bang.

Really, it is going to seem a little ridiculous to everyone but us what we have in store for this birthday. What can I say, his Auntie Em loves him very much, and it is a bonus that she is pretty much a walking Pinterest board. Also, I just want to do all the ideas.

We are making a lot of the things for the party, or I found things on super sale throughout the year so honestly the cost has been pretty low considering all that we have planned. The nice thing about having a party theme picked early is that I can watch for good deals and not have to spend so much the last minute. We are keeping in mind that there are a lot of other littles coming to the party that need things to do besides watching George Hulk Smash that cake. Our family LOVES to get together, so we want this to be a fun afternoon for everyone. And many of the decorations will be used in his room later on as well. Double usage-I am in.

Plus I need things to take pictures of, and a big birthday seems to fit that bill.

I can’t wait to share everything with you all. It should be a good time.

The first thing I will share with you are the invitations I made. I searched for months for the perfect layout for his invitation. I knew what I wanted, but I could not find anything that was cheap. It was ridiculous what people would pay for invitations.

So I just gave up and made them myself in Publisher. ALL the invitations and envelopes cost me a whopping $5 at Walmart. Deal.

I am pretty happy with the way that it turned out for having no design skills whatsoever.

I am so excited to watch George become his own little self, and I cannot believe that he is almost one. I am going to be that mom that makes birthdays an extravaganza. It can be that one day of the year that he is truly spoiled beyond what he could ever imagine. We only live through this life once, why not have lots of cake?

Fun fact, Tom’s family has this field named in their honor in his hometown. So we took all these pictures there. I thought it was a cute personal touch for our family. The only problem was that it was awkwardly high, and George just wanted to eat the ball instead of look at me. He also had so much fun playing in the dirt and would not stay still for most of the shots I wanted on the diamond, but we made it work. And I saw that my future will be full of baths to clean up a mud-caked George.

Do you go all out for birthdays? Do you like themed parties? Would you like to make a bet on how George will react to cake?