We have officially passed our first huge milestone as parents and celebrated our lovely daughter’s 1st birthday!! In true Mexican fashion we threw E a ginormous fiesta complete with an almost life size Minnie Mouse pinata straight from Mexico. The day was overwhelming, exciting, frustrating, stressful and joyous. To say that we did it for her would be a lie. It was 100% a selfish endeavor brought on by several factors, the least of which is me wanting to put my college degree in Event Planning to good use. But nonetheless it was a fantastic celebration regardless of the fact that the guest of honor was not even the slightest bit aware that the entire extravaganza was for her .

Anyhow it truly couldn’t have been a more perfect celebration and since so much of the day was inspired by pinterest I have decided to use the rest of this post to show you the details 🙂

As most of us know any party worth attending begins with a freaking awesome invitation. I stumbled upon something many many months ago from a little shop on Etsy. I pinned it and sent an email to the designer stating that I definitely wanted to buy her design, but that I was gonna wait until it got closer to her actual birthday (purchasing an invitation 6 months prior to her turning 1 was a little over zealous even for me). Much to my chagrin I went to purchase said “invitation” and the little shop on Etsy was CLOSED!!! I went berserk. Nothing else I found could even compare to how perfect this little invitation was. So I did the 2nd best thing and recreated the original design by myself in Microsoft Publisher. (If the original designer ever stumbles upon this post please take note that I owe you $15 & I am truly sorry I copied your original design, but you left me no choice). So anyhow here is a side by side look at the original invitation and my re-make of it.

I was extremely pleased with the final product. The gray bars are covering my address and phone number. Sorry, but I don’t need the entire world wide web to know that much information about me. I downloaded the fonts from a few different online sites and then put it together in Publisher. I was able to get 50 custom invitations for $25 in printing costs from Staples. I could’ve done it for $0.00 if I used my printer at home, but I was out of ink and in a rush so Staples was the better option at the time. After I printed them I rounded the edges with a photo rounder punch and viola professional looking invitations. I also included a little diddy on the back encouraging people to stay and hang around for an “After Party”.

Once again this is a prime example that this party was definitely more for us. Not that she didn’t benefit greatly from it with all the wicked cool gifts she got, but truth be told I think Hector and I were celebrating the survival of our 1st year as parents more then anything else.

So let’s move on. The remaining photos below will give you a good idea of what the rest of the party looked like. I hope they inspire you to throw an amazing 1st Birthday for your little one as well 🙂

All in all it was the perfect day. I doubt we will do something this crazy again until she can at least understand what a Birthday Party is, but until then I will always look back on this day with incredible joy and thankfulness. It was in the simplest of definitions… A great year.