it's my party and i'll cry if i want too!

on saturday, we had peanut's 1st birthday party. i was so pumped for a great day and while it all went well, the birthday boy was pretty tired/grumpy/fussy. i'm not sure he really smiled at all that day but he did have fun and he sure likes playing with his toys now! even though this was his initial reaction to opening presents:
yeah, more on that in a minute. i wanted to share pics of the decorations as well as the actual party. apparently robots aren't a hugely popular theme so we had to wing it and i really had to power up my creativity to get things done. since this is the internet and other people might also google ''robot party theme'' i thought i'd post a few of decorations that might inspire someone else.

first and foremost, way back in july i found some robot party stuff on clearance at Target. i'm talking like .38 cents per pack of plates so we ran with that. we bought the plates, napkins, candles, stickers, goody bags and a pkg of invites/thank yous. so once i had those for inspiration, i used my paint shop program to remake digital versions of those robots. first i made invitations, then had them printed through vistaprint.com after those went out, i worked on the other decorations. using the same robots to decorate everything! the cups, labels for the food, labels for paper-weights (for the balloons) etc. i printed them using the poster setting on my home printer to hang big posters on the walls and printed them smaller on cardstock to make little table sized 3-D robots, an iron on t-shirt transfer and coloring sheets. overall it was very cost efficent and i think it turned out looking cute as well!

his autograph picture frame w/goody bags

coloring station for the kids using melted crayons that we made here

here is a shot of the whole room, i thought the red, blue and silver really worked well

the grumpy birthday boy with his nanaw

and with mommy and daddy

and the cake that nanaw and i made turned out just awesome!

i also made a smash cake for peanut and cupcakes for the little kids

going with the robot theme, we had a ''fuel station" set up. sub sandwiches became ''sprocket sammies'', the toppings and condiments were dubbed ''nuts & bolts'', all the drinks were ''machine oil" and lastly the chips and cheetos were called ''computer chips''. that is pretty much where my creativity ran out; i couldn't think of anything clever for the veggie tray, fruit salad or cake. oh well, i gave it a shot!

everyone enjoying the ''fuel''

uncle matt with great great grandma and aunt nathalie

peanut with his BFF, we'll call him Lando. they are less than a month apart in age. can you tell who is older??

we made sure to capture a new 5 generation photo with all 3 toddlers

as you saw from the first picture, peanut wasn't super excited about opening gifts. okay okay, he threw a downright fit. the only thing that calmed him down was his binky, so that is why he is happy in the following pics. thank you Gerber :)

he loved the ball popper from auntie jude

and the racecar from nanaw and papa was a huge hit with all the kids!

we bought him this walker-wagon. he's actually gotten pretty good at pushing it around!

soon opening the gifts because an ''every kid'' event. they had fun and with all the kids being under the age of 4, it was pretty much expected!

in true one year old fashion, peanut seemed to show more interest in the simple red nerf ball that grandma great gave him

taking the car for a spin and picking up the ladies, lol

after presents we moved on to cutting the cake. this is pretty much the only time peanut smiled the entire party--he loved people singing happy birthday to him.
i can honestly say that as far as the whole ''smash cake'' went, it was a FAIL. peanut did not want the cake, he did not care about eating the cake (even after tasting it).

he enjoyed digging at it with a spoon but that was about it.

even after daddy messed it up (thinking he would eat the pieces) he just stared at it

yep, honestly not all that exciting

after cake the toddlers went outside to break the pinata that i had made:
apparently i made the pinata way too tough for this age group. after several toddler sized whacks, uncle matt had to break it. they loved scooping up all the candy (although i didn't get a pic of that)
speaking of uncle matt, here is a the goofball with all the balloons after the party. the boys sent the balloons "up to the birds."
overall it was a great day with good friends and family, food and fun. even if a certain toddler wasn't impressed. it was his day after all!