Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Alice in Wonderland First Birthday Party for Gwendolyn

As you know, Gwen turned one on June 18th.  I started planning her party a couple of months ago and was really excited about the theme, Alice in Wonderland or you can call it, Gwendolyn in ONEderland :-)  I did a lot of research to get ideas and I made much of the decorations.  There was a bunch of stuff that I did not get to because I just ran out of time, but I am happy with what I did get done.  Take a look:


































Now that I have gotten that out of the way, here is a peak at our birthday girl!
I love this cute dress.  It isn't exactly an "Alice in Wonderland" dress, but it is about the right color, it's pretty and it has a birthday cupcake on it.  Gwen's Auntie Rachel bought her this dress awhile back.  I think it worked nicely even if it didn't perfectly go with the theme.  I have to admit that the picture above was taken at least a month before her actual party.  I wanted to include it though because I don't have any really good pictures of Gwen at her party.  I don't really have any pictures of her smiling.  It is crazy for either of my girls to be caught without a smile, I know, but it's true.  Maybe it was because she was just getting over being sick or maybe it was just too overwhelming with so many people in the house.  Either way, it was clear to me that she had a good time and that is what matters.

The invitation that I ended up going with is this one:

I did add some personal touches to the text and formatting as well.

I managed to get the invitations out in plenty of time, but when 90% of our family lives out of state (waaaay out of state), it just doesn't matter how far in advance you plan.  I know that everyone wished they could be here for Gwen, but it just wasn't possible.  We did, however, have our cousins from three doors down, my sister and my new nephew, as well as friends and neighbors.  It ended up turning into a full fledged kids party.  I know, I know, it is a one year olds birthday party, so technically it is a kids birthday party.  But, all experiences I have ever had for CC's birthday parties included only a couple of other children.  Here in Georgia, all of our friends, family and neighbors have children, which meant that the kids practically out numbered the adults.  Actually, I never counted, but they may very well have out numbered the adults.   And yeah, kids party = CHAOS.  But that is totally OK.  They all had a great time and I think it went really well.

I set up a couple of crafts for the kids that were of course Alice in Wonderland related.  They could make their own mad hatter hats and/or tea pot picture frames. 


















In addition to the crafts, I had the Alice in Wonderland movie playing in one of the rooms and the Alice in Wonderland soundtrack playing in another room.  It was cute to see the kids stop and watch the movie for a little while and then carry on running around like maniacs, oops, I mean little angels. 








As you can tell from my pictures of the table (way up above), I had a lot of sweets available.  In my defense, let me just say that I was going for a specific look and feel.  I wanted everything to look pretty and be miniature to go with the theme.  I did not consider the fact that there would be dozens of children (ok, well, not that many!) with full access to the cupcakes and brownies and petit fours and cookies .  . . need I go on?  By the time we got to the cake, no one really wanted it.  Can you say over kill?  Oh well, I stand by the fact that all of the desserts looked nice :-)

When it was time to open presents, I tried to wrestle the kids into one room. My Mom wanted to skype while we did it, which turned out to be pretty entertaining. I can only imagine what it looked and even more so, sounded like on their end. On our end it was something like this, AAAAHHHHHH, Give me that!!!, I wanna open it!, AAAAAHHHHH, more cupcakes!!!!, baby!!!, MY baby!!!, WAAAAAAHHHHHH!!, Over here Gwendolyn, Open this one, I wanna open it!








Somehow, and honestly I don't know how, but somehow we got everyone to be realatively quiet and still long enough to play "the game".  "The game" is the name I give to what we do for each child on her first birthday.  I have no idea what it is actually called.  I have read that it is a tradition in many cultures.  For us, it came from Nik's side of the family.  The deal is, we put out four objects and see which one she goes to.  Every culture has their own objects, but for us we used a bible, a cell phone, a small bottle of liquor and paper money.  The point of the game is that the object she chooses will give us insight into her future.  The bible is pretty self explainatory although besides from just standing for religion or being religious, I would guess that it could stand for literature in general, maybe even an educator or even less specific maybe art and/or a creative mind.  The cell phone stands for technology and innovation.  Skipping the alcohol for a minute . . . the money could potentially mean that the child will eventually be wealthy, know how to manage money and/or work with money, or maybe it just stands for greed.  I'll go with the first on that one.  I can't seem to figure out how to spin the alcohol in a good way.  From what I can guess, if the child goes for the alcohol, then she will be a drunk or an alcoholic.  Hmph, maybe we can just say that she will be very happy and like to party.  Yes, let's say that :-)  So, here we go . . .
What will she pick, what will she pick??

She is totally going right for it, she doesn't even attempt to glance in the direction of any of the other objects.

And yes, she is going to be a drunk!  Oops, I mean she is going to be VERY HAPPY!!  Just like her Dad :-)

She obviously doesn't know that she has to be 21 to indulge because she is totally going for it right now.

And now, here is some more going-ons of the party.  We had the little girls running around flashing everyone.  Seriously, I'm not kidding.  It was really funny though.  We had the boys and Gwen (and Gemma) racing those ride on toys back and forth.  Then we had the real little one's mostly just playing with some toys on the living room floor.  I think the parents tried to drink. a lot maybe. because yes, again, this party was pure chaos brought on by my need to provide endless sugar to sugar hungry children.  Your welcome :-)














































3 comments:

  1. Megan it was beautiful and you make me laugh out loud reading about it. Great job. I wish we could have been there.
    Love,
    Mom

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  2. Megan this post was great!! I love knowing every single detail and seeing all of those pictures!!! Wish I could have been there, but now at least I can feel like I almost was :)

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  3. Megan, such attention to detail. It looks wonderful! I'm so sorry we missed it, but maybe one day we will make it down your way. :-)

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