Mira is 1!

Mira turned one on the 28th of March. I made cupcakes for the day of her birthday, but the real celebrating happened Friday, and again Monday. Friday night we invited our families and non-church friends over to Nick and Wilda's house for a party. I love crafting and decorating and a first birthday party is the perfect opportunity to do both, so I went all out. I decided on a bird theme because I thought it could be cute without being as overdone as say, ladybugs.

If you want to look at the pictures larger, just click on one of them and it goes to a slideshow.  I was too lazy to do collages, so you get lots of pictures.

Here is the dessert table.

Another view of the dessert table with the posters I made.

We had nest cookies, kindly made by my visiting teacher.  And I dipped some strawberries and decorated them with blue chocolate stripes.

My talented sister, Megan, made the birthday cake.  Didn't it turn out cute?

I made some gluten-free cake pops in the shape of chicks.  I was happy with the way they turned out.  Especially since I wasn't even sure they would bake up and stick together being gluten-free.

We also had jelly beans, chocolate and reeses eggs.

I put the party favors in the big nest I have for doing newborn pictures.  They had chalk eggs, chocolate eggs, and sour gummy worms on top of a bed of Easter grass.

We also had appetizers like strawberry salsa, fruit and veggie trays, and spinach and artichoke dip. In the background there (in the bucket) you can kind of see the picture holders.  I had one picture from each month of Mira's life displayed.

On Thursday afternoon, I did a photoshoot of both Mira and Emilia.  I printed some of the pictures and had them displayed as well.  I will have the pictures up on my photography blog soon.

The biggest picture went behind the birthday presents on the hearth.

Grandma and Grandpa Watts were there, Nana and Grandpa Frohlich, Alison, and 4 of the Childress girls.  The Atwaters came near the end as well.  While the older girls were occupied playing downstairs we played a couple rounds of "Sabrina's game" as it is called in the Watts family. (It's kind of like the game "Things" if you've ever played that.)

Before game playing, though, Mira opened presents--with a lot of help from Emilia.  Her favorite of the evening, I think, was the box of stuff from Nana.  It was just noisemakers and large Easter eggs with necklaces inside them, but when your favorite things to do are make noise and empty things, this is the perfect gift. :)