My baby turned into a one year old a couple of weekends ago.  I decided that I’d try and make everything myself.  It was a lot of hard work but I think it turned out pretty cute!

Disclaimer: No one was injured or maimed from the massive amounts of candy with red dye available.

1. We’ve done a bunch of owl stuff in our son’s room and have continued to carry that theme through his first year.  The invitation was a custom order with Pink Bathtub Designs, and the photostrip was done by us at home.  We just printed 3 strips per 5×7 photo paper and cut them ourselves.
2. I made a small cake for our son to devour himself.  In case you hadn’t guessed it, I’m not a cake decorator.  We purchased the candles on ShopBakersNook.com.
3. Owl Cupcakes!  My first try at making a cupcake look like something other than a little cake with a blob of icing on it…I modeled them after a cupcake I found in Hello, Cupcake.  Mine obviously aren’t as cute as the ones in the book, but hey, I’m an amateur.
4. Your average red cup, found at Target.  The sticker was designed by petitenfantdesigns who normally designs these for a cupcake topper, but was nice enough to do a custom order that we could print on round sticker labels.  We used these EVERYWHERE!!  Can not say enough nice things about Kami at petitenfantdesigns, she was just great to work with.
5. Party hat was made by yours truly with poster board from our local Walgreens and this template.  I just traced the template onto the poster board, cut it and stapled it together.  I got elastic at our local Hobby Lobby and tied it on after hole-punching holes in the side.  The sticker is petitenfantdesigns.
6. Don’t you love the quality of this picture–over exposed flash, etc.  I don’t claim to be a photographer either.  I did a couple of small arrangements of red carnations, cut short and arranged low in vase.  I’m not normally a huge fan of carnations, but it was a boy’s party and I guess if you are gonna have flowers, carnations are totally fine and they fit the color scheme.  We bought red/turquoise candy and put them in other small clear vases I had on hand.  In addition we did some plain cupcakes and added cupcake toppers.  These toppers were a custom order with Chachke Designs.  Sarah at Chachke Designs was also great to work with–highly recommend.
7. We made a ton of Strawberry Basil lemonade which turned out to be a HUGE hit.  We ended up having to make more mid-party.  Recipe:  2 Liters Lemonade, 2 pints strawberries (hulled and sliced), 12 whole basil leaves.  Mix together and let sit for 2 hours before serving.  If you want an adult version of this, vodka goes nicely.
8. The banners!  This too was made with poster board from the infamous Walgreens.  We used the same stickers and then just printed the letters on regular printer paper.  To make the perfect circle around the letter, I used a bisquit cutter as a guide and then cut with that line.  Got the string at our local grocery store.
9. The man of honor in our makeshift photobooth for all the guests to take turns taking pictures!  He wanted to know who was up next.