ONE!

Ellery is (almost) ONE!  I can't believe how this year has flown (what a cliche, but true!)  Her actual birthday is January 20th, but we had her party last Saturday.  How cool is it to turn 1 in 01 of 11?  I think it's pretty nifty (but not as cool as her baby friend Olivia who will turn 1 on 11/11/11! :)

Where did the first year of sweet little Ellery's life go?  (seriously, where did it go?)  We went from this:

Put me back! :)

To this:

It's my party and I'll be cute if I want to!

To celebrate Elle's big day, we had a party at our house with a PENGUIN theme!  Because Tanner's birthday is in August, it's always hot and we invite tons of people and have a blast outside playing in our water toys, running around the yard, letting the kids play with lawn darts - ya know, that kind of thing.  Planning to entertain fifteen under 5-year-olds INSIDE is a bit different!  But John and I had plans....oh yes, we had plans! 

First, we planned an indoor snowball fight!  We have no pictures of our homemade indoor snowballs (Styrofoam + cotton balls =  cute indoor snowballs!), but they were fun...and I'm still missing three.  I'm sure I'll find them SOMEDAY...

Next, we found a slammin' deal on a big cardboard house that was a HUGE hit:

This is about half-way through the party, as evidenced
by the multitude of colors on it and the half-smooshed cake on the high chair :)



Inside the house, coloring, playing, & general unruliness.
And no, Lily did NOT get the spiked punch.  Sorry, Lil, for the silly picture!



The kids loved running inside and out of the house, taking toys inside and out of the house, coloring on it, pushing it around - I'm here to tell ya, if you find one of these, just buy it.  It's a great rainy day activity.  We actually folded it back up and plan on using it again!  It might be a good "babysitter" toy...not that I would pawn my kids off on a piece of cardboard while I browsed Facebook or anything....just an idea.  That's all.  :)

After a while of running around, screaming, and playing...

Hope you watch 'til the end to hear Gabe.  :)

...anyways, after all that, it was time for presents.  I'm 100% sure Tanner was more into it than Ellery, so there were alot of "gentle reminders" that they were Ellery's presents, not Tanner's! :)

Hmmm....this looks interesting....

Everyone helps! :)

Tanner was lucky enough to score one present from Mimi, and after much begging (from more than a few 3, 4, & 5 year old girls), we opened it:

Ellery's watches and learns as the big girls do Barbie hair :)

After presents, it was time for CAKE!  Yay!  Cake! 

Given the penguin theme, I endeavored to make a 3D penguin cake (I always want to have a super-duper cake at the girls' birthday parties!  And I had a bunch of black fondant left over from Tanner's zebra cakes...so penguins it was!  Anyways...).  My good friend Sara Headrick (a Wilton-class graduate :) helped me make a "practice cake" the Wednesday before the party, sharing her knowledge of all-things-fondant with me.  I stayed up until the wee hours of Saturday morning building and decorating the real cake by myself:

She's a cute little penguin. 
There are definitely flaws - I STILL see every one of them! -
but it was a lot of fun to learn to do fondant!

That was the cake for the party-goers, and I made Ellery her own penguin "smash" cake:

A little apprehensive....

Apparently my smash cake is mortifying. 
She looks petrified, doesn't she?!?!?!?  :)

A little coaxing from Mom...

Hmm...I think I'll try this icing beak myself.

Well, this isn't so bad...it's actually quite good!

Would you like some?

Let's give this fondant a go...
(it came careening out of her mouth moments later :)

Telling Auntie Jess how good it was!

All done! :)

Full of sugar and happy about it :)

The little smash cake took a beating, but it was a yummy beating.

This is one of my favorite pics of the entire day. 
That little cake just looks so pleasantly defeated,
like "I did my job, and now it's time for me to go!"

When it was all said and done, it was a ton of fun - and my house had toys strung from one end to the other.  This is my house, represented in one toy:



This is our Busy Ball Popper.  I'm fairly certain this isn't
covered under Fisher-Price's warranty.


It was so worth it, though, because I'm pretty convinced everyone had a good time!  Such a great way to celebrate Ellery's 1st birthday!

After birthday-party naptime, Ellery got a few more cute-a-pottamus pics under her belt:

I'm about to climb up here...but if I smile and say "HIIIEEE!"
maybe I can distract them!

 

I mean, ADORABLE.  Seriously.



She has that "cheesy-there's-a-camera-there" smile down pat.

It's pretty hilarious.

She's a cute ONE, our little Ellery! :)  Happy first birthday!