the road to and after laken: Laken's shark party!

Pinterest saved my life. Life has been nothing but fast lately. A year has gone by with my baby love, and it feels like it was only yesterday. My son and I have had a fabulous first year together, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. We got to celebrate his birthday this past weekend with ones we love and ones who love him.

These past couple months have been crazy. It feels like it has been non-stop! Going all the way back to Sid’s birthday, then shorty followed by Tiff & Ben’s Wedding, to my birthday, to Jessica’s bridal shower, losing our Paw Paw, Laken’s Birthday, Jessica’s wedding, Paw Paw’s funeral, then lastly Laken’s birthday party.

On the way to go set up for Laken’s party… I was in tears thinking about how much my family has gone through with the tough loss of our paw paw, but we still managed to pull off a beautiful wedding and everything else dealing with his time in the hospital. That man and our maw maw have raised a heck of a family!

Laken’s birthday party was shark themed. Months ago I had looked up a couple things online for ideas for Laken’s birthday, but that was about it. Once it came closer I had it in my head that I would do a shark party, but hadn’t made my moves on getting anything or even making the invitations.

So much was going on that the invitations didn’t get made until the day after laken turned 1, and I still have a stack of invites that didn’t go out. At that point I thought… whoever comes, comes. Whoever doesn’t, doesn’t.

I had 3 days to put it together, and once May 1st (payday) came around I hit the ground running. This is what I came up within 3 days. (Thank you Pinterest for the ideas).

these were put together at last minute. it never dawned on me that i didn't have a centerpiece for the tables. while at the dollar tree i found these buckets and just had to make something work. i think they turned out great. my cousin joslynn helped fill them with sand so they wouldn't fly away.
the shark hats were awesome. probably one of my favorite things made for the party. i saw all different kinds of variations of home made shark hats and this one suited us just fine. my aunt teresa assembled them, and they looked amazing! i copied a party hat i had laying around the house and teresa added the teeth and eyes. totally awesome! ARR!! inspiration

I would have liked the line the backs of the food table and the desert table with something grand, maybe some bunting or pendants, a chalk board, a big ol shark with his mouth open... but 3 days, remember?
there was nothing exciting about the food, except for it filled us up. yum!

of course when i saw this on pinterest, I had to do it. link

stay thirsty my friends.

I tried having baby friendly deserts, because there were alot of younger folks invited. I had yogurt dip frozen bananas (MESSY), vanilla pudding with little sharks in them, red velvet cupcakes with fins... i wanted them to "bleed" when you bit into them. and I had a chum-bucket snack bar. which was all kinds of goldfish. some were the sweet, others were the salty kind.
inspirations: 1-2-3

my aunt teresa made the cupcakes. when she mixed the food coloring with the icing it started to seperate and then the "water" started to look sort of sparkly. i loved they way it turned out. i printed her up some fins. so instead of using fondant, which is the legit thing to do, we used cardstock. lol.

pudding is very kid friends, and an easy snack. I wanted to use the gummy sharks my aunt bought for me to use for the party and this was a hit.

I didn't go out of town to buy anything for the party. I would of loved to have bought buckets to give to the kids to hold their goldfish, but this was something I just pulled out of the air. little black cups with handles, and why not throw a label on it... just so people would get the idea.

if you didn't know the water was shark infested, and i had to warn people. inspiration
the water slide was borrowed from laken's "aunt" sarah! one of my best friends. her family came and set it up and we really enjoyed it.

laken truely enjoyed himself. if you couldn't tell. this little water activity area my mom got him. it is perfect for little babies!

laken got a 2nd birthday song. we sang to him on his birthday and he ate a cupcake his cousin Tiffany and Sid got for him. This time the crowd was a little bit bigger. He's so awesome.

i don't think he is used to so much sugar.

i didn't get really any pictures of laken and his party guests.. i was very much involved in running him around or making sure things were going right. there are plenty of pictures floating around though on peoples cell phone. ha.