Rhys' Little Man Party (Part 1)...

Can I just start this by saying oh, sweet heavenly days, I adored planning, crafting, cleaning and decorating for this party?  

I think I might only just now be recovering from a post-party depression.  There are no more parties to plan.  And yes, that makes me a little sad.  Not because the baby has turned one but because literally, I am out of events to get ready for.  

Until Thanksgiving.

And that is sooooooooo far away.

We didn't do a big party for Aubrey Kate's first birthday.  Just family.  Of course, they came all the way from Alabama so that in and off itself makes it a big deal.  I decorated and planned for it too.  But this one was a little different.

In large part because of his birth, I felt like I wanted to celebrate him but more importantly the people in our life who prayed us through those hours last summer.  Leading up to July, I was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for my prayer warriors on that day.  A ruptured uterus with no heart rate or blood pressure change for me or Rhys and no bleeding until we were being wheeled into the operating room.  

Only God, y'all.  

(On the flip side, I now measure all pain on a scale of 1 to Ruptured Uterus.  Keeps things in perspective.)

With every wipe of a dirty window or stitch of a bow tie, I was thanking God for our lives.  For a healthy, happy, dapper little man who makes you work hard for his smiles.  For an amazing daughter I've gotten to see grow from baby to little girl this past year.  For a husband I have been privileged to witness become a God-breathed servant leader to our family and church.  

Every day is a miracle.

For that reason, for the chance to praise God with each bit of preparation, I threw my first and last first birthday party.  

Literally, I have not sent out an invitation...to anything...since my wedding.  Twelve and a half years ago.

Alright, so the idea for the party was pretty evident.  Rhys is a Little Man and I adore throwing him in a bow tie.  It fits his personality.  When I shared the idea with Mom during Mother's Day weekend, she suggested everyone at the party wear a bow tie like Rhys.

Um...LOVE.

Pinterest proved to me, once again, that there is nothing new under the sun.  

My first task was to create the invitations and bow ties to be sent with them.  I looked on Etsy and there were some really precious ones I could have ordered complete with all the cupcake toppers, food labels and banners.  But most of those included either neck ties or mustaches.  

I do not like mustaches.  Just don't.  They give me the creeps.  

And neck ties didn't fit Rhys.  Bow ties are way cuter and that's all he wears.  

And so I did the totally amature thing and created an invitation.  

In Word.

Yes, Word.  That hideous, unimaginative, Microsoft program some of us actually didn't use to write papers in college because we didn't own a computer.  

That Word.

Here's how they turned out:

Printed them on the home printer.  Which is another miracle.  Darn thing wouldn't print a single page and then, out of nowhere, it printed these.  And then not another single page.  Seriously.

I used my corner rounder, threw a bow tie on the top and DONE!  

Totally amature but totally cute.   

Then I set about with the decorations for the house.  Starting with the bow tie wreath for the door.  

My precious friend, Jennifer, loaned me her vintage cameras and a couple of suitcases.  Mom brought her old set of kids golf clubs.  I didn't want to compete with the bow tie theme but wanted some older pieces to make it feel warmer.  And less girly.  More Little Man Cave.

The clothes line and photos is an idea from Aubrey Kate's first birthday.  I used her clothes to decorate so I did the same for him.  Had them in the dining room with the bow ties and welcome sign.  

I loved how the suitcases looked with the cameras.  So old and classy.  

All in all, I made close to 60 bow ties.  There were 40 on the table for the party.  I used some extras to decorate like around the sweet tea server and the cake plate.  

Everyone wore their bow tie!  I made enough so everyone would get a new one if they'd forgotten to bring theirs but most remembered.  Thus, I have a zillion left over bow ties.  Oh well.

I loved seeing everyone wearing them!

Our friend, Kyle, putting his on...

I made AK's into a hair bow.  She still pitched a fit but she wore it. 

Love this!  One of the few moments she was smiling...

Mine I wore as a necklace.  I tied left over scrap material around it to make it more full.  Turned out pretty cute.  If I do say so myself.

The mantle gets decorated for everything.  In fact, sometimes, it's the only thing that gets decorated.  This time, it got the least attention.  Hopefully, it didn't feel slighted by that.  It will return to it's place of glory for football season.

My kitchen has a great deal of "breakfast bar" kinda counter space.  Oh it sounds wonderful, doesn't it?  But really, it's simply nothing more than a dumping ground for all the "stuff" that comes into the house.  Keeping it clean is a daily chore.  

And should we ever win the $5,000 Lowe's gift card we keep filling out the survey for, it will take every bit of that to put in granite.  

But that's not the point.

The point is I needed to decorate it somehow so I put more pictures of Homeboy around.  He adds a definite layer of cute.

The last crafty thing I did was make Rhys a post-birthday cake bow tie tee shirt.  He makes everything look precious, right?  But I do love that I now have a "bow tie" he gets to wear on a regular Wednesday to the grocery store.  

Goodness.  Eat. Him. Up.

Note Nana's bow tie.  She classes the joint up.  

I think I'll end Part One there.  The food is another post all unto itself.  Not because it was fabulous but because there are so many awesome pictures of it!  

More to come...