Polka Dots and Stripes

So things have been so busy around here, my sister reminded me that I never posted about the Birthday Party EVENT. How could I forget!? It only consumed all of my free time and late night hours for 2 months or something like that! :) Anyway, as I said, my babies were worth it and we had a spectacular day. I started "google-ing" 1st birthday ideas for twins sometime in August. Then Tara introduced me to Pinterest...gold mine! From there, everything grew and grew and grew. I decided on a "Polka Dots and Stripes" theme b/c it was so easy and fun and each "twin" could have their own theme. Jenna was of course my Polka Dot and Caden sported the Stripes. I had so much help from my mom and sister especially...we have been Birthday Crafting since Labor Day at the beach! My mom made their onesies...Caden's tie with the stripes and Jenna's necklace with polka dots. They were sooooo cute!



A small miracle occurred in the fact that all of our family members were able to come! How does that happen!? We were so thrilled to celebrate our miracle munchkins with so many people who prayed for them and supported us our 1st year. It all went off without a hitch and the twins stayed surprisingly happy! They were SO tired that they couldn't calm down enough to take an afternoon nap, and Jenna cried for an hour when we put her down for the night, but after that they were out cold!

Now, some fun details and pictures!

First, the invitation! I was squealing like a little girl when I saw them finished. I am SOOO happy with them! I found the style on my second love (Etsy.com)...the store would come up with a digital file then send to you to print anywhere you wanted. Yes please! Once she sent it to me, I went and had them printed at Wolf Camera on the day that 5x7's were on sale. All in all, $15 spent on invitations! After an hour of trying to think of rhymes, I gave in and called my resident expert on "knowledge and usage of words and rhymes"...Mrs. Jenelle Schmidt. I sent her very random, non rhyming words that I wanted used and literally after like an hour or two, she emailed me her first draft which was perfection! Thanks again J! It is showing up a little neon on the computer, but it was all of our fun, bright colors...perfectly! We also had fun with asking our guests to wear Polka Dots or Stripes...even the guys participated!



If you forgot to write down our address, it was pretty easy to find if you got on the right road! I'm sure our neighbors thought the Circus had come to town...Great Job Uncle Brad and Aunt Robin with the outside "festivity." :)



Our guests were greeted by this amazing wreath my sister made! Another Pinterest inspiration...it was so easy to do and now we have an official Birthday Wreath to use all throughout the year!



I made a polka dot and stripe Birthday Banner to hang and went and printed a bunch of our recent 1 yr/ family photo shoot to put on the mantle. I went and found their little hats they wore in the pictures that are on the mantel too so we could see how big they have gotten since then!




We scheduled the party from 12-2 when the twins would be up from nap and happy. This meant we needed to have food for our guests....so, we had FOOD! Everything was in theme of course: "dots" or "stripes." I had a very good time thinking about foods that fell into one of these categories. Thanks Mom, Nana, Robin and Sarah S for helping me fill up our table! I found a template for the water bottles on, yep Pinterest. I went in and changed it so it would have our colors and I added the number "1" on ours.







We had our picture taking station with a polka dot and stripe background. And the theme continued in the kitchen with streamers for stripes and paper plates for polka dots!



I came up with a "Twin Trivia" game for people to play if they wanted to. I went back through the blog (so readers should have had an advantage!!!) and picked out fun facts for people to guess if that clue was talking about Jenna or Caden. I probably had the most fun just going back and reliving all of these memories!




This next idea was my hands-down favorite. Found this on...yep, you know where. I went through and printed out pictures of them, one for each month. Since they are always doing the same thing, most of their pictures "matched" meaning they were in the same place, same pose, similar outfits etc...used all of my stockpile scrapbook paper and glued on a clothespin and there was a snapshot of our year! I couldn't stop there! On the other wall, I did a timeline of all of their major "firsts." First snow, First Sunday at Church, First Boatride, First Christmas Morning etc... (Confession: they are still hanging up...I can't take them down now! I enjoy looking at them every day!). To make things more sentimental, I went up in the attic and got down their Preemie outfits to show where they started and ended the 12 month side with sleepers they are wearing now. I can't believe they were ever this small (and the Preemies were big on them for a while!)











We had lots of stuff for 50 people to do...yes it grew and grew to 50 ppl! We had Wii upstairs, Ping pong in the garage, cornhole in the driveway, football in the backyard and a crazy show of demolition inside with the twins' cupcakes. I had a gift certificate to Whole Foods and if you know me at all, you know that the thing I stress about the most is cooking. I do NOT enjoy an ounce of it. So all the moms who make these adorable, cute 1st birthday cakes from scratch all week...I'm not one of them. So I bounced on over to Whole Foods one morning, spent 15 minutes picking out my cake and it was DONE! I was thrilled with what they came up with. Next time I'll know I could have taken our invitation in and they would have remade the dots and stripes on it. doh! But they did what I asked for sure. And the taste? Ridiculous. So good. I ate my weight in it (and that's alot!). Yellow Cake, Chocolate Ganache covered in Cream Cheese icing. Mercy! They made cupcakes to match for the twins to smash and eat. I let them have chocolate cake and well, you will see how that turned out...:)






The twins reacted to the cupcakes EXACTLY as I suspected. Caden doodled around with this with his index finger while Jenna went in with both hands like a machine. You will see the progression...it's quite obvious :) I finally went and broke up Caden's for him so it would look a little messy, he started to get into it at that point:)










We were a little overwhelmed at the outpouring of love and support we received. The twins had sooo much fun opening presents and playing with the paper. We love our friends and family so much! We were trying to respect everyone's time so we were mowing through the presents quickly. And for some reason, this was the year for no one to put their name on the gift! haha So, your Thank You cards are going to be generic this year since I have no idea who gave what. :)






For favors, I saw an idea where a mom used babyfood jars. Well, we only went through 1,000,000 this summer so I just saved them, washed them, spray painted the tops, glued ribbon, glued a round punch out of scrapbook paper, then wrote "1" in puffy paint. We filled the jars with Skittles (polka dots) and Twizzlers/Sour Straws (stripes). Easy peasy and who doesn't like candy?




My (tired) Birthday Boy and Girl! And yes, I wore polka dots AND stripes to be fair :)




I was beat when it was all said and done, but so happy with how everything turned out. I know they wont remember this day, but I can show them pictures (thanks to our wonderful photographer: Aunt Robin!) and share with them how much of a celebration it was for me and Ryan to show how thankful and blessed we are to have Caden and Jenna with us for a year already! We love you!