Carter’s 1st Birthday was held at a condominium that we’re moving into next year. We’d booked out the clubhouse and planned a pool party to celebrate Carter’s big bash!

Being insane, I had the ‘brilliant’ idea of taking the kids to a play gym in the morning, then have lunch outside, then go to the party venue to set up. “We’ll have heaaappps of time!”, I smugly reassured everyone.

Errrmmm… not quite.

The party was starting at 3PM, and we arrived at 2:30. So that left us with 30 mins to set EVERYTHING up.. and the whole time more and more guests were starting to arrive. I had envisioned everything set up, and I would then scurry off to brush my hair and put on some nice makeup and lipgloss to make myself presentable. There was NONE of that! The last time I brushed my hair was in the morning that day, and so it was wild for the entire party. Didn’t have time to do my makeup, so I ended up having to whack on a superhero mask (at least I was on theme!).

And did I mention Hunter was meant to do his 2hr nap prior to the party, but didn’t? Man. Between the morning play gym and the epic party that went til late, I’m surprised he survived with zero meltdowns.

But it all worked out!! We had a great time, and hope all our guests did too. As usual, I didn’t have time to chat properly with everyone, and couldn’t even make sure everyone was doing OK and their kids were happy. I was running around like a headless chicken through most of the party 😉 But you know what? I like manic parties and I loooove having friends and all of Carter’s kiddy friends (we pretty much invited the kids he sees fairly regularly) around, so I enjoyed myself.

Hunter had a total BLAST through the party, since most of the kiddy guests were also his friends.

Carter, on the other hand, was pretty miserable. He’s in the throes of extreme separation anxiety and was constantly frantic that someone would come up to him to look at him (which they do), or touch him (which they do), or talk to him (which they do), or try and carry him (which they do). So he had a perpetual frantic/horrified look on his face!! Gah. He was also super-glued to either my Dad or me, so I think we all got virtually zero photos of our birthday boy with any of his guests. Siiigggghhhhhh…

But, onto the setup of the party!!!

I was actually pretty impressed that between us, we managed to set up EVERYTHING in that half hour. Not too shabby, right?

 

See above? Apart from the (epic) cake, NONE of the decor cost more than $2. The most expensive item ($2) was the blue tablecloth which I stuck onto the wall as a backdrop. Everything you see there was handmade, hence why costs were so low!! My goal was to do the lowest cost party decor and see what I could achieve. I was really proud of what I managed to cough up 🙂

Will do a proper blog post on all the DIY stuff for the party later!

 

And of course……. the superhero cake. This was crafted by ET Artisan Sweets and they absolutely blew me away. I’d sent over my idea on what I wanted, as well as images of what I’d like to see on the cake, and they churned out a real beauty!!

The chocolate cake inside also tasted SUPER GOOD. I was impressed with it as it was dense and moist. In fact, most guests came back for 2nd or 3rd servings, so I was happy 🙂

The cake cost a staggering $400 (gulp) but it was worth it because it was pretty once-in-a-lifetime (I’m certainly not doing something like this for his next birthday!) and I justified it because I’d spent so little on the party decor. Plus, Mum and Dad paid for it as a gift for Carter!! Thanks Mum and Dad!!

 

This below was the table that held all our party favour boxes, a centerpiece with superhero-dressed chupa chupa chups, homemade stress balls, and decorated cups and straws.

All the stuff you see below took days and days to put together…. it was a HUUUUGEEEE amount of effort!! I feel tired just looking at this photo, because I know how much hard work went into it, LOL.

Aaaanddd….. enter the birthday boy!

 

 

 

 

 

We managed to snag a few photos of us with friends, but not very many because unfortunately we were all over the place through the party!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More party blog entries later…. too many to sift through right now 😛