Dexter turned one last Friday! We started out the day with breakfast in the high chair, we will get to breakfast in bed one day. I made him one of his favorites, French Toast! We then had some McDonalds for lunch. Processed food on his birthday, what more can a kid want? Right? We took it easy on his actual birthday because we were having his birthday party the next day and I had lots of the "day before prep" to do.
The theme of the party was DOGS. There wasn't a lot of dog party ideas on pinterest so I had to get creative and come up with a couple things of my own. For the balloons, Zurchers didn't have any dog/paw print balloons. But, did you know that Zurchers will fill up balloons they don't sell in their store? It still costs like a $1, but this was a life saver! I ended up finding paw print balloons on Amazon and took them to Zurchers before the party to be filled up.
For the food, I designed cute little cards to label our menu of: ShiskaDogs (I used the Chicken Apple Sausage from Costco-so yummy), PAWsta Salad, Fruit Kibble, Dog Bone Chips, and Puppy Chow for the party favor. It was quite a bit of work with preparing the Shiska Dogs, but I assigned people to bring other food so it wasn't too much work.
Setting up the party was fun! Sometimes I think I should have gone into interior design instead of advertising. :) I love decorating and putting things together. A few days before the party, I took an empty oatmeal container, toilet paper rolls, and a paper bowl. I glued them all together to look like a fire hydrant and then I painted it red! I found the most adorable dog balloon to set up on the food table.
For games, I thought it would be fun to do a dog show type thing. I was going to have some kind of obstacle course that people would have to accomplish in a timely manner to win a ribbon. BUT, I decided not because Dex doesn't walk and wouldn't have been able to do it. So, instead our game was a drawing contest. I had everyone color/draw a dog. We then let Dex pick the top 3 dogs! The people who won, each got a cheesy ribbon of first, second, or third place. I'm going to put the pictures of dogs in sheet protectors and a binder so Dex can look at them. His love for dogs is real. He could look at dogs all day long!
The cake...oh man! No words to describe. I could never make a cake that looks this cute. My mom made it and I didn't want to eat it. It was darling! Dex didn't take a nap in the morning so by the time we had cake, he started eating it and then he started falling asleep. Finally he got some cake in his mouth and the sugar rush kicked in. He was such a happy boy and went absolutely crazy!
The party was a hit! But, next year I think we will opt for Costco cupcakes and whoever wants to come, swimming. That sounds much easier for me, the mom and party planner. :)
