Kingston's ABC 1st Birthday (Part 1)

Hi! Okay, so this is an insanely long time coming now. I must admit, I was completely overwhelmed with the sheer about of pictures that I took of Kingston's birthday party. So overwhelmed in fact, that I had (and I am currently having!) a hard time paring them down and deciding which ones needed to be edited. So, in order to keep my sanity, I have separated his party into multiple posts.

Before I go any further, let me just say that Kingston's party was FABULOUS! It honestly couldn't have turned out better. The weather magically turned from monsoon to sunshine. The guests all got along wonderfully. The babies and kids had a blast with one another. Most importantly, my little one year old monkey had the time of his life! I am so thrilled with the amount of fun that was had by all. Even I had fun! I figured I would be a stressed basketcase the entire time, but I didn't stress AT ALL. I enjoyed every second of celebrating my baby's big birthday!

So let's get down to it! Kingston's 1st Birthday was ABC themed with a primary colored color scheme. This theme was both easy (because every word has letters in it) and difficult because of the same reason! It was almost too broad, but I think it all worked out in the end. Some of the highlights we had at the party were a cookie bar, a six foot cake, a time capsule, a custom ABC guestbook, a balloon artist, and some fun sensory and craft elements! The party was at the Glamparents house and took place both inside and out.

For his invitation, I ordered our invitations from Tints and Prints:

(all personal information blacked out)

We all wore some kind of Kingston related attire. The birthday boy himself wore this shirt that we custom designed for him with the help of TheSassyGator :

I wore my "Kingston's Mommy" shirt, Todd his "Kingston's Daddy" shirt, my father his "Kingston's Grumpy" shirt, my mom a shirt she made that said "Kingston's Glammy", and my sister wore an adorable custom ABC dress (she put foam letters all over it!) with lots of K's for Kingston. We were all decked out and ready to party. 

For the party, we hired an amazing young balloon artist Brian to create some custom balloon sculptures and entertain. He is absolutely amazing. Check out his website to see all of the fabulous creations he has made out of balloons: Balloons by Brian. He made a balloon sculpture of the birthday boy, two alphabet block sculptures, and a letter K balloon for Kingston's high chair. 

(that silly guy is Grumpy!)

(Baby K checking out his balloon bud!)

Cute right?! 

Let's move on to desserts. For dessert, we had both a dessert table and a cookie bar! Here is a glimpse of the dessert table from afar: 

(close up of the Mama-made birthday banner)

One of the showstoppers at K's party was his birthday cake. I ordered it from a dear friend's husband who is seriously talented! Clearly when I ordered it, I had no idea what I was talking about in terms of size (I should probably look at a ruler more often), but the thing was massive. And a serious masterpiece! The cake said "K is for Kingston" with one large "K" cake and 7 small ABC blocks that spelled the rest of his name. 

His smash cake was another block with "1" all around it. 

On the dessert table was the cake, smash cake, cupcakes, and personalized lollipops. I made the cupcakes using our favorite Funfetti cake, white frosting, and ABC sprinkles ordered from TheKitchenPantry. 

The lollipops had Kingston's picture on them and were ordered from Oriental Trading. 

The utensils were stored in a ABC block that I bought at Hobby Lobby and painted. The menu was a custom chalkboard that I made using PicMonkey. Each of the little labels that were in front of each item were custom made on PicMonkey also. I used the alphabet template from our invitations and superimposed it onto the chalkboard background. 

The cookie bar was really fun! Our guests could help themselves to the cookies during the party and then fill a bag with treats to take home. 

I made up rhymes for all of the signage and printed them on brightly colored cardstock. Then I bought cheap frames at Walmart to hold them all. We had six different types of cookies available in the cookie bar. Cinnamon Schoolbook (ABC) cookies from Trader Joes, Alphabet Cookies from Oriental Trading (these were also in the goodie bags), homemade regular and chocolate pizzelles, chocolate chip cookies, and peanut butter cookies (all made by my grandmother), and homemade ABC cookies made by me and my trusty hubby sous chef. We were up all for two nights making those cookies! Here they were in process:

They were not perfect looking, but they tasted pretty great! 

Thanks for reading part 1! Stay tuned for part 2!