HOME TOUR

I can barely believe we’re here–Aubrey’s first birthday. Gosh, so many emotions as I sit to write this–joy, grief, elation, and a sense of “where the heck did this year go?” My mom really wanted to be here for Aubrey’s floral strawberry first birthday party so there have been many tears leading up to this day.  But like most things in life, the lovely and the hard are all mixed together into a beautiful story and a memorable day.

For me, this is something I’ve dreamed about for a long time–a little girl party. I’ve never gotten to plan one of these and this was incredibly special to me. I hope you enjoy Aubrey’s Floral Strawberry first birthday and can snag some ideas for your little one.

When sweet Aubrey was born we took one of those early moment pictures where she was all squishy and pink. My mother-in-law showed the boys that picture and they said, “she’s pink like a strawberry. OH that should be her name, baby strawberry.” So clearly strawberries needed to make their way into the day and they did, in all their subtle cuteness.

The problem is, I don’t love bright red and that tends to be the overwhelming theme of the majority of strawberry parties I found, so I pink-ified them! Add some lovely florals and it’s enough to brighten even the gloomiest of New England January days.

I wanted a whimsical and fresh floral and I searched high and low. I fell head over heels with some floral art from Kelsey Garrity-Riley. As a mom and illustrator, she wasn’t able to do custom invitations / illustrations for me but I did buy an original floral one from her Etsy site and her floral cards that were on BHLDN at the time. I was incredibly humbled when she sent me the digital file for the floral one so I could blow it up.

I used her florals to make the invitations and signage for the party with a beautiful pink strawberry from Kate Pugsley for Red Cap Cards. Marc from Watson Printing here in Wellesley, printed out all the signs, labels, thank you tags and invitations for me. He was wonderful to work with.

I was slowly inspired over the course of the year, picking up little trinkets and items as I went along…a vintage strawberry painting from Brimfield and Strawberry plants in a bag from a home store in Hingham. With a sweet label and relatively small size I knew they’d make a perfect party favor. Thoughtful details help pull a theme together and make it a memorable event for all.

I loved making the party favor boxes for the kiddos. I bought these boxes from Amazon and tied them with white cotton twine I had painted with green acrylic paint. Consequently, this stiffened the twine and made it more vine-like which was what I was actually going for, a happy accident. I cut individual leaves off faux eucalyptus and hot glued it on the “vine.” Then came the darling paper flowers inspired from a Pinterest photo and made with scrapbook paper from Michaels. The favors were filled with an adorable wood seed packet found in the Target dollar section along with a Leccare lollipop, strawberry stickers, pencils, play dough and erasers.

FLORALS

Now what is a floral party without florals? I reached out to my good friend Michelle from Fiori Florals in Franklin, Ma and asked her do the flowers for the party.

She’s beyond talented and I didn’t have to do anything which was a welcome change. I sat back and watched them bring in gorgeous garlands, handmade wreaths and arrangements, three smaller-sized ones and one large one for the kitchen island. The house smelled like a garden.

DESSERT TABLE

I usually start by sketching the dessert table. They’re the magical jewel of a birthday party in my humble opinion since there’s nothing quite like them in daily life. I knew I wanted whimsical wreaths that looked like they were foraged from the forest flanking either side of the floral one by Kelsey Garrity-Riley. Marc was able to blow it up to about 12 x 16″ and then I put it in an 17 x 22″ frame. In order to get the staggered look Michelle made 6″, 8″, and about 12″ wreaths. She tucked in a few beautiful flowers. The strawberry lollipops are from Leccare on Etsy,  SugarandSukkar made the fondant strawberries for the cupcakes and I made the mini strawberry pies.

Sweet Eileen from Honey Lou Baking Co did it again, literally made the most beautiful cookies I’ve ever seen. I say that every time but these are spectacular. The pink watercolor strawberries, beautiful floral one, the gingham.  I almost cried when she brought them in. Thank you Eileen for making my cookie dreams come true.

The last time I was at my parent’s house, I came across a photo album with pictures from my own first birthday. My mom had chosen a light lavender for the day and the crown jewel was this adorable gingham cake with flowers. So gingham on the cookies and birthday invitations was a quiet nod to my momma. Do the meaningful and it will end up magical.

And then there was the most glorious cake of all time. Pure buttercream perfection. I reached out to Miri from 10BloomCakes shortly after my mom passed away. I hadn’t expected her to even respond. Miri lives in North Carolina, a busy momma and travels around the world to do buttercream flower palette knife classes. So really what were the odds? She’s that good. But bless her heart, she planned a Boston class around Aubrey’s birthday and sat in my kitchen the morning of decorating this glorious cake. It was an absolute honor to spend some time with her and stare in awe. So much talent and such a kind heart. If you have a chance to go to one of her cake classes you really should! It’s on my bucket list just so I can spend some more time with her.

THE KIDS TABLE

We’ve used these kids tables we got at Target a few years ago time and time again. They’re so sturdy and a beautiful unfinished wood color, a worthwhile investment. We used three tables and 8 chairs to make this grouping.

The florals from Kelsey Garrity-Riley inspired the colors, a sage green and blush/peach palette. I found material on fabric.com for the dessert table (a five ft folding table from Walmart) and runners for the kids table.

Even though this was a first birthday party, we had lots of little friends come over and they needed a place to sit and eat lunch. I bought these botanical napkins and loosely knotted them. These bamboo plates were topped with a delicate rose gold color plate with wood silverware next to the setting. I cut out the florals I created and glued it to the white paper cups. Probably the cutest part of the kid’s table were the mini picnic baskets filled with freeze-dried strawberries and set on top the plates. They were also a huge hit with the kiddos.

LUNCH, SNACKS AND DRINKS

One of the more stressful parts of parties tends to be the food. Full catering for events can be quite costly so we usually supplement some homemade items with catered options. We had WholeFoods make sandwiches, White’s Bakery made the cakes, cupcakes and BLT salad and then we made a charcuterie board and strawberry spinach salad. For drinks we had a hot cocoa bar with delicious homemade marshmallows by Rachel Hyser, strawberry thyme water, and Fentiman’s because how pretty do they look with a velvet ribbon and sweet wood strawberry!?

PATIO LIGHTS AND GARLANDS

When in doubt, string patio lights inside. This was such a fun element and really lent itself to both ambiance on a gloomy day and a true parisian floral party. We used two strands of these Brightech patio lights and hung them from the ceiling using white ceiling hooks from Home Depot. They’re heavy so you want to make sure you get them into a stud. Can’t recommend these lights enough, we plan to move them to our patio in warmer weather. Brightech is a great company and included me in a design interview here.

THE BALLOON ARCH

Knowing I had never done one of these before, I bought a kit off Etsy with custom colors, O-02, O-03, O-04 and N-05 and a handheld pump so there’s no blowing up by mouth a gazillion balloons.

My hubby started blowing up balloons around 11 pm and attaching them to the special plastic tape the set came with and we were done by 12:30. Boy heck, it takes about an hour and a half to do one of these if you’ve never done it before but the results were so good and so fun, it was worth every minute. I ordered an eight foot balloon arch because I wanted it to trail only on one side of our dutch door but I did buy extra balloons, the 24″ and 36″ balloons and I’m glad I did because the different sizes make the garland more interesting.

There’s nothing quite like loving lavishly on those dear to us the few times we are able. Life is just too short and you never regret it for a single second.

Aubrey is a blessing and we’re thankful we get to do life with her. This year has been a dream but because life is hard, I was really needing a celebration in a big way– to grab the lovely and run wild with it. Sometimes our heart can be clouded by the day to day ordinary that we forget how fleeting all of this is. So happy first birthday party Aubrey! Thank you for being a beautiful reason to celebrate.

 

DETAILS

Cake: 10BloomCake

Cookies: Honey Lou Baking Co

Florals: Fiori

Kid’s Table and Chairs: International Concepts

Aubrey’s Dress: Tartine et Chocolat

My Dress: Shoshanna

Rose Gold Plates: Bonjour Fete

Florals on Invitations: Kelsey Garrity-Riley

Photography: Ruth Eileen Photography

Balloon Garland Base: One Stylish Party