First Birthday Party Plans

I am so excited about Carolina's first birthday party!  I've been googling and pinterest-ing for a few weeks now piecing together what I want to do.  It's not until next Saturday but I have been working on things a little at a time.  

Today I had some help though and it was wonderful!!  I had a little assembly line going to put together mason jar tags and water bottle labels.  Having a teenager full of hot air helped blow up a lot of beach balls too.  I'm so happy I didn't have to do that.  Thanks guys!

Carolina had fun playing in the beverage containers. 

There was even an official goldfish taste test to see which ones I want to serve.  

Can you tell it's a summer beach party theme?  It's a loose theme but I wanted something that would be simple to do.  It all started with the party favors, which are adorable.  

I'm one of those crazy Moms who wants her baby to eat a healthy cake.  I tested this one out because it uses bananas as a sweetener, so no added sugar.  It's kind of like a banana bread and really good.  I still have to test out what icing I'm going to do with it but I'm thinking whipped coconut cream.  I realized this idea of healthy everything is going to be an uphill battle when I saw they are serving marshmallows to the 1 year olds at VBS next week.  

For the guests, I am making strawberry cupcakes.  I baked these today and the icing has real strawberries in it.  After sampling these, I think I'm going to go with a vanilla cake and strawberry icing though.  The strawberry cake competes too much with the icing.

 These are my blue mason jars.  I love them!!  I deliberated over whether to buy them or not because I really don't need any more glasses.  I decided that we would use them a lot in the future and Gustavo really liked them too.  

There was a lot of experimenting with what to do about names on the mason jars.  I have a limited amount 12 blue and 12 clear so people can't just lose their glass.  I was going to do sticky labels but they might sweat off.  Hopefully this will do the trick.  

A friend made water bottle labels at my baby shower and I was completely enamored with them.  They make everything look so much more elegant!  I googled some free templates and found these which go perfectly with beach ball colors.  I just used packing tape to put them on.  So simple and free!

I'll be working on a lot more little details through the week.  I'm having so much fun planning for her first party.  It's a great distraction so I don't have to focus on how a year has passed and how it can be that my little baby is turning one.

Sob.