Looking Back at LD’s First Birthday – A Tiny St. Patrick’s Day Leprechaun

Now that little mama is only days away from celebrating her 4th birthday, I am feeling especially nostalgic. Particularly for this tiny leprechaun…

…born mere hours before St. Patty’s day, donning green kisses and sequin a year later, on her very first birthday.

As I plan her big bash celebrating 4 amazing years – at the end of this month, I look back at her very first birthday party, and all the fun details that went into planning it.

The theme was “Kiss me, I’m EL-Ish” as a play on her namesake and good ol’ St. Patty.

Red velvet and chocolate cupcakes were all the rage at the time (still is, as far as I’m concerned), but I wasn’t quite sure if green vanilla frosting would go over well, so I mixed it with a good number of mint buttercream cupcakes and hoped for the best (butter and icing sugar with peppermint drops and a teeny bit of green food coloring).

We decided to make this a knife-free cupcake party rather than a cake for obvious reasons – and of course to accommodate to the extra sweet messages we wanted to include with every bite. Cake pops weren’t on our radar at the time, so we simply added photos of the little leprechaun alternating with “Kiss Me, I’m El-ish” clovers, adhered to cake pop sticks from Michael’s. We didn’t have card stock to print these tags on, so I used regular paper, supported by clear packing tape on both sides, and cut along the edges. Sounds a little crude, but it saved me from having to pay for lamination and endless worry of getting icing on the flimsy paper. A little unorthodox, but a whole lotta cheap.

In case anyone was wondering how old the celebrant was turning, we decided to strategically place wooden number ones around the room.

To match with the decor, the tiny leprechaun managed to score a sequin green top hat headband that shockingly stayed on her head throughout the whole party. We didn’t want to damage retinas by wearing a gaudy all-green ball gown, and instead settled for a BKchic Boutique one piece bodysuit with built-in suspenders, a splash of green, and an appliqué “kiss me” long tie. It was a perfect match to her striped baby legs leg warmers and her homemade go-to tutu (which, by the way, she STILL can squeeze herself into, 3 years later!)

We set up our version of a green screen and a borderline creepy, inflatable, gigantic leprechaun so that all our guests could have a nice photo-op with the confused and overwhelmed 1 year old.

And since most of her friends were still crawlers, we figured, a nice pool of plastic balls would be the way to go. We had a gigantic keyboard set up, a karaoke station, random toys to play with, games for all ages – but the place to be, as far as the toddlers were concerned, was the ball pit.

The first birthday cake smash proved to be… interesting. And pretty much amazing.

Tears were shed. And I’m not just talking about the tiny leprechaun.

But all in all, it was beyond our expectations.

Even Big Daddy got into the green spirit.

All in the name of love right? And our one love she certainly is…

~The LOOK:: Want it? GET it! ~

Accessories:: Michael’s Sequin Top Hat Headband ~ (similar Elope Green Top Hat Headband here)

Top:: BKChicBoutique Kiss Me, I’m Iris St. Patrick’s Day Tie with Black Suspenders Bodysuit ~ (similar here)

Bottom:: DYI Black Tutu ~ (similar Capezio black tutu with glitter tulle here)

Accessories:: Babylegs Green Striped Legwarmers ~ (similar Born Posh St Patty’s leg warmers here )

Footwear:: The Coral Pear Bow Leather Baby Moccasins

And the countdown begins… 4 more days and my baby’s 4,

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