Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Polka Dot Party

Yep, my baby is 1! I can't believe it! Where has this past year gone? How did she get so big? We had her birthday party last Saturday & it was so much fun! I decided just to do a pink & white polka dot theme for her party. I saw some cute pink & white polka dot wrapping paper & that's what started it all! It was really easy to find lots of coordinating supplies to work with though!
Ok, so here's some of the stuff I made for the party-

I decided to make the party invitations using the Stampin' Up! My Digital Studio (MDS) program. I did this mainly because this program is so quick & easy to use & I needed these done in a hurry! I just created a page in MDS, then I exported it to my computer. Then I opened it in my photo editing program & cropped it to 5x7 size. Then I was able to upload it to my Costco Photo Center & had the amount I needed printed as 5x7 photos. They were only $0.39 each so it was really reasonable & Costco's printing quality is great!
Here it is:
(I blurred out any personal info, so that's why you see some smudgy spots.)

I made a banner to hang over the food table in the kitchen. I used my trusty Big Shot machine to whip it out in no time! Honestly, the Big Shot is probably my most-used, most-loved craft item!
I have been taking photos of Aidynn every month with her puppy so that we could see how big she was getting over her first year. I decided to print out the photos & display them on a wall in our family room for the party. The scallop circle says, "Aidynn's First Year Flashback" & then each photo has the month on it & is attached to a piece of pink & white polka dot ribbon with a clothespin.
I really like how it turned out:
A close-up of one section:
I had decided that I wanted to do a cute little dessert table for her party too. I wanted everything to be little because she's little & it's her first birthday. So I made a little cake, cupcakes & brownie bites. Oh, there were pink & white M&Ms too! Yummy!
The cupcakes were vanilla cake with light pink buttercream frosting. Then I used white chocolate chips & stuck them all over the top upside down (or pointy side into the frosting) so that it looked like polka dots.
The cake was a small two-layer chocolate cake with pink buttercream frosting. I used white melting chocolates & stuck them upside down (pointy side in the frosting) to make it look like white polka dots all over the cake. I can't take credit for this idea, though, I have seen it done numerous times before with different colored chocolates-so easy & fun!
And the brownie bites. They were topped with a swirl of pink buttercream & I sprinkled some white nonpareils all over them so they had teeny tiny polka dots.
I also packaged up some goody bags for our little guests to take home. Target had a set of 12 cookie cutters for $2.99 & a set of 4 full-sized Play-Doh containers for $1.89 so I was able to make each goody bag for only $0.72! (Well, add tax onto that, but still I thought it was awesome!) Plus with the cookie cutters being either a flower, heart or star & the Play-Doh coming in various colors it was the perfect gender-neutral goody bag!
And here's the birthday girl:
And don't you love her cute little crown? I found it in the Creation Corner Etsy shop a while back & I had to buy it! So, so cute! And it matched my pink & white polka dot theme perfectly! And you should check out the Creation Corner blog, I do regularly, because Tasha makes some awesome stuff & posts some really great ideas too!

What a great party!
And I'm still exhausted! ;)

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