Lauren Elizabeth

 Happy Birthday Violet

So here are a crazy amount of pictures from Violet's birthday party. 

The day of Violet's actual birthday was during one of the craziest weeks for me. I was asked to be in charge of a Super Saturday activity for our church. It was a lot of organization and prep time for me. Then throwing Halloween in the mix and Mike having school, it just didn't make sense to try and celebrate that same week. So after a few days of recovery from the church activity I finally got to set up and pull together her party. 

I had been planning and slowly working on things for a few weeks. So luckily it wasn't too bad. I kept thinking, oh maybe we won't really do a party and just keep it simple. I just couldn't do it! I seriously love parties way too much. Since I don't live near family I never really get to throw parties and I haven't done a wedding since December. So I figured for her first birthday I would make it special(and my own selfish reasons). I debated back and forth a lot on if it should be more of all mine and Mike's friends or if it should be more about Vi. We went with Vi. We decided to just invite the babies that she plays with and knows. So we kept it on the smaller side and got to see all these little babies who have been together since they were born. I loved it. We moved our ottoman out and just brought out all the toys for them to play with. I made salted caramel cupcakes. They are so good. They are seriously addicting. I made caramel apples and mini pumpkin donuts with a cinnamon sugar glaze. The theme was " You Are My Sunshine". My mom sang that to us all the time when we were little and we sing it to Violet often. So I made little suns to go in the cupcakes and I made the gold sign with the song lyrics out of gold foil paper. I'm not a super bright color person, so I went for more of a pastel and gold vibe. I made the paper garlands that hung on the wall and just added in some velvet rick rack. I made a little cloud pillow and some goody bags for her friends that said "when skies are grey". Inside was a little apple sauce squeeze pouch and a party hat for everyone. Of course Vi loved getting to attack her cake and we loved getting to celebrate her and her big first year of life.

 I apologize for the bad lighting in a lot of these pictures. Our apartment almost has no overhead lighting in the main living room. This whole daylight savings thing sort of came up on me quickly and I was losing light fast. 

The smash cake was a very very last minute decision and that is why

 the frosting job is super welfare.