Charlie's Nautical Birthday Party

I realize that Charlie's first birthday was waay back in November, but with the holidays and a million other crazy things going on around here (more on that later), I'm just now getting around to posting the details.

Surprising that I should be late for something, no?
Umm...no.

Moving on -

I'm a big fan of birthdays.
Big.
Huge.
In fact, it's one of the many things that I seriously enjoy obsessing over.
The planning, dreaming, and  creating... oh...
It's so much fun.
Sure it's CRAZY stressful, but I really love knowing that I am creating special memories for my kids on their special day.

Typically, I try to find a party theme that reflects my kiddo's favorite things during the previous year.

The thing is, a one-year-old's main interests are pretty much sleeping, eating, and pooping.
Talk about a seriously un-fun party theme.

So - I had to dig a little harder to come up with Charlie's party theme.

Before Charlie was born, my aunt sent Charlie a sweet little Skippit the Sailor Dog. It quickly became his favorite little snuggle blanket.

(photo: Bunnies By the Bay)

The more he loved on that little guy, the more my party-freak wheels started turnin'.

I searched a bazillion different ideas on the internet and found some fun starting points...and with a lot of help from some very sweet and creative friends, things started coming together.

At the last minute, of course.

We decided to have Charlie's party at our church playground because our teeny tiny house isn't big enough for our family, much less 20 + party guests.

Since our only option was an outdoor party, we prayed really, really hard for a pretty day.

Y'all - we didn't just have a pretty day - we had beautiful, unusually warm, fantastic, amazing, day.

Birthday Miracle in the howse...

As the guests entered the playground, I had a table set up with a sign that read:

"Say Ahoy to our Very Good Boy!"

Guests were invited to write a note to Charlie and place it in a bucket for him to read when he gets older.

Sadly, I don't have a fancy photographer-created photo of the bucket, but I managed to use my janky camera to show you what it looks like.

Ugh. Back to the pretty pictures, please.

Past the playground area was an open space where I put three large round tables for my guests to sit and a large rectangular table for the food.

Each round guest table had center-pieces created with toy boats in galvanized buckets.

I made the boats from $1 wooden kits from Michael's. David and I spent approximately one meellion hours the night before the party painting and putting them together.

Not David's idea of a fun night.

He really loves me.

Originally, I wanted to put real water in the buckets, but it turns out that $1 boats don't so-much like to float. So - I had to use blue craft paper instead.

You do whatcha' gotta do.

For the food table, I bagged up some tasty fishies for snacks

and served "fish and chips" for lunch.
Not real fish and chips- but the kid/picnic friendly version of fish and chips: chicken tenders and french fries from Abner's.

I served them in the most adorable red plastic baskets I borrowed from my friend Maribeth and found red polka-dotted napkins at Michael's.
Score.

I made my first fabric banner (!) by hot-gluing scraps of a white t-shirt, some pretty Michael Miller fabric, and some blue seersucker on some burlap twine.

For the party favors, I fashioned scrapbook paper into paper cones, and attached natural string for handles. Inside the cones were swedish fish, gummy worms, and a beach themed bath toy.

I tied burlap twine to the fence and clipped the favors to the string to double as party decor.

For the craft, I had the guests decorate newspaper sailor hats.

The kids had fun choosing their "flair" for their hats.

Charlie enjoyed watching the big kids create their hats.

He wore a hat I bought from an internet store called Grammie's Attic (how do you like that name?).

I embroidered his name on it to match Skippit's sailor hat.

After crafts, we enjoyed some delicious birthday cupcakes made by my amazing and generous friend Breanne.

Charlie seriously enjoyed his cupcake.

And his second one.

And yes, he had a wardrobe change for his cake-eating. 'Cause that's how I do.

Obnoxious?

Maybe.

Ok. Definitely.

After cake, we opened gifts...

Look at Charlie's face in this picture:

David helped me create a sailboat out of a cardboard box for the kiddos to play in.

I don't have a picture for this, but I also had fishing poles made out of dowel rods and string for them to pretend to fish with.

Charlie was happy to just crawl around and explore.

Ok - so this next picture is Maribeth and I taking off the packing tape that held the boat together, and then hot-gluing it together again.

Why?

Why do I have a hot-glue gun at a birthday party?

Why am I re-creating a boat when I should be cleaning up?

Why?

I wish I knew...

Actually, we did it so that we could get this picture:

Oh It's good to have equally freakish, perfectionistic friends!


p.s. 
Thanks again to Josh Malahy, our talented photographer and friend for the great photos!