A Day in the Life of The Manzo's: Jude's 1st birthday party

Jude's 1st birthday party was on Sunday, April 18th at my mom's house. It was such a GREAT day!!! I of course was super crazy busy putting everything together and making sure my little vision was just right for his BIG special 1st birthday (that he won't even remember mind you). None the less it turned out great and so MANY of our wonderful family and friends came out to celebrate with us!

The Birthday Boy!!!

I found so many amazing idea's on the internet on so many other people's blogs. Seriously there are some pretty talented people out there. Lucky for me I had the help of my sister to make things for me :) She made these balls of yarn that sort of look like those big puffy trees in all the Dr. Seuss books, and we hung them from my mom's patio cover. They were in all different colors: Green, Blue, Red, Yellow, White. I actually made a few things myself!!! I printed out 4 different well known Dr. Seuss quotes and hung them around the party. I also had a TON of stuff Dr. Seuss character stuff animals that I placed along with books on each of the tables as centerpieces. I printed out the little sign "Jude I Am" and I made a little "Happy 1st Birthday Jude" banner to hang around Jude's highchair. It all turned out exactly how I wanted it to!! So colorful. I got all this stuff from funtocollect they have such great deals and a TON of Dr. Seuss stuff.

I got a lot of my ideas from this blog here, she did an awesome job!! You'll see a lot of similarities.

My sister did this AMAZING invitation too!!! It turned out great!! She's so talented!

Front

Back

She also made Jude's little shirt!! It came out sooo good!! I loved it!

For games for the older kids, I got these book marks and stickers from Michaels so that they could have a little something along with their favor bag to take home. It turned out to be a really good idea, I didn't think at first that they kids would be all that interested in making a bookmark, but they loved it!!

We also played a game called "Pin the Hat on Cat in the Hat". It was sort of cheesy but I think the kids liked it, I mean two people won a prize which is what I think they wanted anyway :)

I don't know what I was thinking when I was planning this party, I sent out 82 invitations and we had about 75 adults, 15 kids, and about 8 toddlers/babies!!!! My mom said next time we're having the party at the park!!!

This little area was the "Baby corner"

Jude's cake/cupcakes were AWESOME!!! My sister's friend Kari's aunt (whoa!!!) made them!! It was great, all Kari told her was that we were having a Dr. Seuss party and she went with it and it turned out GREAT!!!

Jude hates it when he hears a loud group singing, so as soon as we started singing Happy Birthday, he freaked!!! Sort of funny!!! LOL

Even though Jude won't remember his 1st birthday, I think the pictures will really show him that we celebrated in a BIG way!!! I'm so glad my that my Grandma Marge and Uncle Larry & Aunt Mo could come out, and that Mike's sister Marji and our neice Cammi could celebrate with us too!! It really means so much to have such a great family and amazing friends to celebrate with us our little monkey's 1st birthday!!!