Where Has a Year Gone?

Life has been a little crazy lately.  I know I'm not unlike many first-time moms out there when I admit that I went a little overboard planning and doing for my child's first birthday party.  How could I resist though--this past weekend, we celebrated this little guy:

Who one year ago, was this LITTLE guy:

Crazy how time flies so fast.  Its hard to believe how much our little ones change and grow over the course of a year, and how much they change us.  If I could, I would go back and re-live every single moment of Tate's little life.  And I wouldn't change a thing.....its been wonderful.

So wanting to celebrate this little guy as best we could, my family came down to Minnesota from Canada, and we had a great weekend celebrating with them, my in-laws and some good friends.  Here's a peek at the festivities:

I made up an invitation to establish an underlying Mr. Potato Head theme.......its easy when your little guy has the nicknames "tater", "taters", "tater tot", "sweet potato", etc., you get the picture.  He may never get rid of these endearing names :)

I made chocolate mustaches and red candy lips to play off of the Mr. Potato Head theme--they were a hit!

One of Tate's buddies showing off his mustache perfectly!

My cuter-than-ever niece modeling her luscious red lips!

And Tate.....not really grasping the concept that we wanted to get a picture before he devoured the chocolate!

I spent time making a fun, multi-colored bunting and strung it to all four corners in the space.  Everyone knows those tissue paper poufs that Martha Stewart has made a killing on.  They are SO easy to make yourself (the same idea as Kleenex flowers we used to make as kids :)).  A $1.00 pack of tissue paper can get you one huge and one medium one!

These cupcake wrappers were fun and easy additions to the decor.  I added some "eyes" to a few of the cupcakes to carry out the theme.

My favorite thing was the simple and delicious cake.  Of course I roped my cake designer sister-in-law into icing it for me, and it turned out to be smooth perfection.  I shouldn't admit this, but that tiny bunting took longer for me to make than the big one!

Here's the inside--a combination of chocolate and banana cake, with gel coloring to turn the banana layers blue.  Cream cheese icing made this whole thing so delicious.  The little guy thought so too, and dug right in:

We finally had to take it away from him, because he would have eaten the whole giant piece and probably been sick.  He has his mom's sweet tooth :).

What a great day this was, made even sweeter because we were surrounded by family and friends.  I loved recalling the memories of that amazing day on October 20, 2011, when life changed forever and my son was born.  Can't wait to see what adventures this upcoming year (and beyond) hold!