A Woodland Birthday

Lincoln turned one on June 2nd and I'm just now getting around to sharing pictures of his party. It was a small gathering with family, but was just right for celebrating his first year. 

Weeks ago I decided we would use his party as the opening of our summer/pool house, and whatever decor I put up would stay there for the summer house decor. It's been a warehouse for Daniel, but I consolidated boxes, washed the windows, unrolled the carpet and tidied it up for the party as well as for summer. 

Let me preface all the following pictures with a disclaimer: I am firm believer that kid's birthdays can be WAY overdone. Wonderful childhood memories can be made without any theme, decor, games or party favors. Those are all simply fun extras for the child and it's completely up to the mum that feels up to doing it. So while this may look like a lot of work and time and effort, I had fun doing this. I'm not a Martha Stewart, but I really did enjoy decorating and preparing for my little boy's birthday. Plus, I was doing double duty for decorations: 1st birthday AND summer house decor. So most of it stays out there in the summer house now for any upcoming summer gathering. Score!

The cross flag is my rendition of a maritime signal flag for the letter "X". There's no significance to that particular letter for our family; I just liked the design for that letter best. Ha! It's a very simple muslin square with the navy cross machine appliqued on. One day I'd like to have a 13-star American flag to hang out there.

Thanks to Parabo Press, I got 25 free prints of the past year with Lincoln. I tried to take monthly pictures of him sitting in the same chair. It's so fun to see the changes all lined up together, because babies do a LOT of changing in those first few months.

Daniel was good enough to cook our sausage patties and brats over the fire, and the rest of the menu was fairly simple too. I did as much as I could ahead of time. If you search for woodland or forest party ideas on Pinterest, you will probably realize I stole most of my ideas from other parties. I could have made little tags for the food that said things like, "trail mix" or "twigs" (for pretzels) but I thought that was going a little far. ha! We just ate and it was fun.

Fruit trays are very simple, but they can sure be time consuming if you have to wash and slice and arrange it all in an owl shape. ;)

These hedgehog cookies were fun to create. I used my favorite gluten-free sugar cookie recipe and just shaped little hedgehogs by hand before baking. They turned out just right and I dipped them in chocolate before Natasha sprinkled them with chopped pecans or sprinkles. 

 Ah, the cake. I knew I wanted a Schleich animal on top with a somewhat "naked cake" look. It turned out exactly how I had pictured it and that sure can make a Momma happy.  I made Danielle Walker's yellow cake from her book, "Celebrations". In my mind, a bear adorned the top. But, in the end, a moose was perfect. Especially since we were just in Canada last fall and there are a lot of moose up there.

 Lincoln was happy to dig into the cake, but was not fond of eating it. He kept handing me pieces of crumbled cake instead of eating it. :)

 In all the birthday cake fun, I completely forgot to light the candle and have everyone sing before he smashed it. So we did that afterwards. Better late than never! I made it a tradition to always use a brand-new candle for baby's first birthdays, and I kept the one on Natasha's 1st birthday cake and I kept Lincoln's too. It will go in his baby book.

It was so fun having family sitting around our little campfire, laughing and talking and simply...being. 

The cousins went swimming, pretended to be animals and helped Lincoln open his gifts.

It was a grand 1st birthday for a grand little boy.