J's Storybook First Birthday Party

This past Saturday, we had J's first birthday party.
As mentioned here, I am so thankful for the kindness of everyone that attended.

 I started planning the party a little while ago but right in the middle of my planning, I committed to a NoSpend January Challenge in which I couldn't spend on anything besides the essentials. Party stuff? Honestly? Not essential even though I wanted him to have a party and a good one at that.

Does that sound right?

Anyway, with no money available to spend at first, I decided to post on Freecycle for decorations that anyone might have left over. I mentioned my theme (storybook) and ended up with Winnie The Pooh items and best of all, I ended up with the entertainment for the party!

I got an email from a woman who teams up with her daughter and paints faces for a living. She offered to come to the party and paint faces for free. What a major blessing she was!!

The children loved her, we adults got our faces painted, her work was beautiful and even with more work popping up the same day, she showed up and stayed a long while.

J got a crown painted on for The Little Prince while I stuck with a nice purple and glitter design around my eyes. I don't have the pictures on the computer but very pretty. We all posed quite a bit.

Besides that, my family pitched in quite a bit to help me with the party.

My aunt let me take over her house for the day. My house is a bit smaller so she thankfully opened her door to loud, running children, squealing and sometimes crying babies, and chatty adults. And food. Food on just about every surface.

Here's the rundown:

Green Eggs and Ham Quiche

 The quiche that I planned to make for one of our meals, I made for the party. I don't know if the farm eggs did it, but I got so many compliments on it and I didn't even use a recipe this time. I ended up making it twice cause it was gone so quickly.

Cloudy With A Chance of...Meatballs

 I found the recipe for the meatballs from the allrecipes App the night before. It's called Meatballs Nirvanna. Very tasty. My sister made them for me cause I was running around a bit too much to do it.

Colorful Bowtie Pasta with light olive oil dressing

Peter Rabbit cups of veggies (carrots and celery with Ranch)

I saw the cup of veggies on Pinterest and decided to use it for Peter Rabbit.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar's fruit

   Fruit spears and water with fruit in it. The idea that I saw on pinterest to use juice in ice cubes didn't happen as planned so I put fruit in the water instead.
Sorry for the blurred picture. They're from my cell phone.

Humpty Dumpty Brownies in eggshells

Not a very good picture. It doesn't help that the brownies didn't come out quite as well. I was thinking of not using them at the last moment but we all know the nursery rhyme. Humpty had a great fall and all his pieces couldn't be put together. Fitting since the shells broke.

The kiddos loved cracking them open.

This is what they should look like:

Lol! Mine could have had they been turned over and not broken.

There was also chicken salad sandwiches (which I should have put with Chicken Little!!) and chicken wings. My aunt's contribution to the party.

The cake was a homemade stack of three books. On top the first it said "One Upon..." and on the spine it said "A time". The second spine said "they lived" and the last said "happily ever after". 

For favors, we had pink chocolate pig nose pops for The 3 Little Pigs. They were great and big enough that when you hold them up, they cover your real nose.

As for the other things, the banner was pictures of J throughout the past year, a calendar for sign in and birthdays ( cute pinterest idea) and also a jar for birthday wishes for the birthday boy.

J ended up with a lot of goodies.

My mom and sister bought him a playhouse and a swing set. We put the swing set together today:

And of course it comes out turned. I took it right after he was fussing from being left inside with his aunts.

 My family did so much the day of the party. My little sister helped with all the food as I was busy with the cake, the quiche, the pasta, the baby, she helped me grocery shop the night before, my aunt with her house and the extra food, my older sister and mom with the little extras like picking up the calendar, putting up the banner, buying him the playhouse and set, taking pictures, keeping him entertained. The list just goes on.

It was better than great. I had a great time, got so many compliments on the food, and was just completely blessed over and over with kindness. I'm already planning party number 2. I'm excited to get it set so the next time it will be even more relaxed for me.

This weekend, I'm going to do a little bit for my birthday. I signed up for birthday offers and coupons from various places last year so I am determined to use them all this year. Last year at this time I was still spending most of the day in the bed and couldn't so this year, I'm getting out a little bit. My goal is to do as much as I can on 30 dollars or less which should be easy cause that's all my budget. No party or anything. Just an outing or two.

Tonight I have some ice cream to eat and some cleaning to catch up on. We were all sick with a quick bug yesterday except for J so I got nothing done. I don't really want to do anything now but I might try before we head to bed.