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E turned one last week, and so did everybody else's baby. It's been party, party, party around here! We just got back from a party with Harper at the Garfield Park Conservatory where E ate lettuce off the ground. Why is it that even when you have a whole plate of food for a baby, he'd way rather eat garbage? Mary was smart and planned her baby's party for someplace not her house. This was a smart idea.

We went another way with it.


Yeah. For E's party we threw a whole big to-do in our whole little apartment. I drew inspiration from here for the polka dot theme.





I have to say, the dots were the cheapest party decorations in the history of birthdays. I spent 95 cents on them. Scrapbooking paper was 5 for 95 cents at Joann's Presidents Day Sale, because it's very important to presidents that Americans get good deals on scrapbooking supplies. For the record, you should never pay full price for anything at Joann's. You should receive a minimum 30% discount. If it's not on sale, wait. It'll go on sale sooner or later, or you'll get a coupon in the mail or, while you wait, you'll find you didn't even need the whatever it was (probably you didn't). Anyway, I traced bowls on the paper and cut them out, then hung them with ribbon I already owned.

We made polka dot sandwiches, which were such a hit that they were gone in an instant. No picture. No nothin'. They were just regular sandwiches cut into circles. The inspiration website used a cookie cutter to make circles, but we just used a glass. I do have two containers full of crusts-only sandwiches in my freezer if anyone is interested. You can choose cheese and turkey or cheese and hummus. We also served Cream of Vegetable Soup (thanks to my friend Anne for the recipe!!). By the way, when I'm saying "we" here, I mostly mean my brother and sister-in-law. Colleen made the sandwiches and here's my brother Paul putting the finishing touches on the soup, wearing one of my seldom-worn vintage aprons.

Doesn't he just have that 50's housewife vibe? They had all this time on their hands because their sweet baby slept through the whole party. Seriously. He slept through a party of like 30 people, many of them racing through the house with balloons and screaming. I need to get a baby like that.

Of course, when you sleep through a party, you do miss some fun times. You miss the recycled snake party favors, for example.

These were really fun to make, once I learned a little bit about stitching stretchy fabric. Before I learned a little bit, I confess I did some swearing.

Of course, there had to be cake:

Thanks to my mother-in-law for the cakes! In my original vision of the party, I made amazing cupcakes for everyone from scratch and decorated them with icing and dots and stuff. They looked amazing. Lucky for me, though, in reality, I didn't have to lift a finger or we'd still be waiting! E enjoyed totally destroying his very own cake in the traditional rite of passage.

I hope to get some more pictures in the next few days as I get them edited. In the meantime, I can't believe my tiny baby is already a year old. He's absolutely the most amazing, important thing in my life. Happy Birthday, little boy!