Polka Dot Birthday Party

I really enjoyed planning Addilyn's party and had so much fun making things for it.  I did so much of it slowly the last two months, which made it not stressful.  By far my favorite part of her party was the little dessert table and backdrop that I did.  

I made the tablecloth using this tutorial.  It was pretty easy and I love that I can use it again.  I found the white tablecloth on sale at Target for $8.  I bought five different paint colors, but you of course could use however many you wanted.  

For the background I had planned on cutting out a million circles, which would have been so dumb.  I thankfully found one of those huge hand punch things at Micheals, that was only $7 thanks to a 50% off coupon and SO worth it.  I just sewed them together and it really didn't take too long.  I think I cut out all the circles in less than an hour, and it didn't take more than a half hour to sew them.  I bought two packages of card stock for less than $10 and used that for all the things I made.  It was great because it was cheap and everything matched.  

I printed out Addilyn's monthly pictures, used the cardstock for backing and glued them to a ribbon to make a little banner.  Details about Addilyn's cute chalkboard print can be found here and was done by Erica at Inspired by Above.

I loved the cupcake toppers.  Chris helped me edit the picture using photoshop.  I printed them on cardstock and cut them out using little scissors, then taped them onto candy sticks.  I made the cupcakes using a box mix, but did make the frosting myself.  It was my first time using those pastry decorating bags and it really wasn't that hard.  

 

I'll have to do a post sharing more pictures about this, because I love it.  I had guests write in the board book "Guess How Much I Love You," just like we had them do when Addilyn was first born using the book "On the Night you were Born."  It will be so sweet to have that to read over and over.  

Dessert popcorn.  So good and easy.  I wanted polka dot cups but couldn't find any so I bought a package of little white circle stickers for a dollar, plus cute sticker/tags that I wrote on for the center of the cups.

 Most of our party was outside and thankfully it was a beautiful day.  I'm not sure what we would've done if it rained.  I had a few decorations for our outside.  I bought two sets of these pinwheel and puff balls on clearance for a $1 at JCPenney a long time ago and they worked perfect.  I had a little bit of the polka dot banner left to hang from the deck, plus a few balloons we had filled.  (Don't mind the crying, pantless baby.)

Addilyn's outfit details here

A friend made that chalkboard for me for one of my baby showers and it was perfect for her party.  I don't have a good picture once the food got here but I found these little chalkboard clips for cheap at Michaels that I wrote what each dish was.  (Thankfully Chris' aunts all brought a side, and we bought Italian beef and there was plenty of food!)  

I did not want to be responsible for making Addilyn's cake and happily found a perfect one at Jewel for $7.  They had a polka design and I just picked the frosting colors and it matched perfectly.  I made her little banner by cutting out triangles, writing letters with a Sharpie and sewing it together with my sewing machine. I loved it! 

The little banner on her high chair was made with cardstock.  I cut out the letters and glued them on with a glue gun because the paper was so thick.  I used a glue gun to glue the ribbon on too.  

I was really happy with how everything turned out and how the party went.  It was fun, but I'm pretty sure we won't be doing another big birthday party for many, many years!!  I still have so many pictures to go through, so expect another blog post of party pictures!