Liam's First Birthday {Where the Wild Things Are}

We had a BLAST on Saturday having some of Liam's grandmas and grandpas over and his friend Alex for his birthday party. It was so much fun for me to plan and put together that when it was all said and done, I was wanting to live it all over again and looking forward to his second birthday all at the same time! I definitely will NOT be rushing that though.

When guests walked through the front door we had a table set up that they stopped at first. It had gold crowns for the boys and flower crowns for the girls. :) This was one of my favorite parts about the party and made everyone feel like royalty for a day! I should have done some pre-measuring on the crowns though because they weren't quite big enough for the grown up boys and just a little too large for the babies. haha oops. We also had the Where the Wild Things Are book on the table for Liam's guests to sign and write a message to him. This was such a special part of the party because it something he gets to keep forever. Something even more special, it was his daddy's book growing up. Nic's mom bought the book for him back in '93 from the ISU book store when she was in grad school. The third thing on the table were party favors/ treat bags. I filled ziploc baggies with salted caramel brownie bark (which was amazing by the way!) for the guests. I wrapped the top of the baggies in my favorite quote from the book, "(Please don't go) I'll eat you up, I love you so."

You better believe I jumped at the opportunity to decorate my kitchen shelves for the party. ;) I blew up pictures of the wild things characters from the book and added a picture of the King of the Wild Things from the photo shoot we did for his invitations. The sticks were from Joann's that I already had and just plunked them in where there was space between the shelf and the wall. I downloaded this font that matched the one from the book and used to it to create the happy birthday banner. I crinkled up the paper so it looked worn and added packing paper behind it for a background. I bought a package of moss that I had planned on using to create a table runner for the food table but that stuff is seriously messy and doesn't attach well so I sprinkled it across the bottom shelf instead with a few more pictures of the wild one. I loved making the tassel banner and it has found a new home in Liam's room above his name on the wall already!

Liam loved having his Sita in town for the weekend so she could be at the party!

Once all the guests arrived we had a few snack foods... veggies with red pepper hummus, a bacon parmesean cheese ball covered in "moss", and a cheddar cheese ball with almonds in the shape of a pinecone. ;) We had lemonade with fun paper straws and mini waters to drink. And last but not least, a simple little white cake for the birthday boy!

Cake round TWO in one week! After we were all done singing and blowing out the candle, he took one look at it like, "Oh, I got this!" and dived right in!

We saved presents for last. Naturally, Liam was more interested in the bows and the way the paper crinkled than anything else but since the party, he is loving playing with his new fun toys thanks to his sweet grandmas, grandpas, and friends! He has been tending to a fisher price zoo, cruising around with his radio flyer push wagon with everything you can imagine dumped inside of it, and learning to shoot some baskets and scores some goals with his basketball hoop and soccer net.

It may be grainy but this is seriously one of my favorite pictures of the two of us. Thanks mom for capturing that moment.

Liam carted around that little Elmo from Grandpapa and Granny Dee all day!

Liam with his little friend, Alex. Cute boys!

On Sunday evening, after everyone had gone home from the day before and my mom left town, Nic sat down with Liam and built him his very own pad for his new helicopter to land on with some magnetic blocks he got. Nic is just a little excited for the thought of spending hours with Liam building legoes in the future. This was the first birthday version of that. ;)

I think I have finally made it through all of my posts about Liam's first birthday. It was just too fun of a week to condense it all into one post. :) We'd keep celebrating this little boy every day if we could, we love him so much!