Paul's Birthday Party!

Are you sick of Paul Birthday posts yet? Here's one last post!

For Paul's party, we went with a Little Blue Truck theme as that is one of Paul's favorite books and has been from the early days of his life. The publisher has a free party kit that you can download so you can put a party together pretty inexpensively. Honestly I didn't do all that much in terms of decor to carry out the party theme. Party planning is really not my thing and Paul won't remember this birthday. I know some moms put a lot of time, effort, and money into planning their kids parties but that's just not my style (you do you!). So I did a few things to make the celebration special and more so focused on the food (yummy food is a must for me!).

I did order a few things from Etsy to make the party a little more special. First off, I purchased this invitation. Instead of having someone else design the invitation, you purchase a template. That made it easy to play around with the wording and update it to our liking. Instead of printing and mailing these invitations out, we went the "green" route and emailed them to our family members. I'll print one for Paul's baby book but figured an e-version of the invite was sufficient for family members!

Paul's invite with our address redacted

I also purchased a Little Blue Truck "milestone" board. I've seen other friends make something like this on a chalk board. My writing is TERRIBLE and I don't have a creative bone in my body so I decided to purchase one. I figure it will be something we can put in Paul's baby book and it was a nice thing to display at his party.

Lastly, I ordered a special onesie for him to wear. I figure it's something he can wear this spring so it won't be a one-time use shirt!

This picture sums up how Paul felt about all the attention. :(

The party table I set up - I kept it very simple and put out a couple of books, his milestone sheet, and the decorated cupcakes

A pre-party photo

 I ordered some balloons for the party. I thought Paul would love them. He was afraid of them. He's looking at them in this picture.

"What the heck are those things floating in the air?"

I forgot to take a picture of the spread of food but I snapped a picture of my (very full) plate of food! We served Cuban pulled pork and pulled chicken sandwiches (I obviously skipped the bread - GF buns are pretty awful and not worth the calories!), cheesy party potatoes, jicama salad, home made guac, veggies and hummus.

For dessert we made chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting. In hindsight, we should have covered the cupcakes after we frosted them as the frosting got kind of hard after they sat out for a couple of hours. But they tasted good! Paul wasn't too excited about the cupcakes.

He did take a few bites eventually.

But overall, I think he would have preferred banana pancakes with peanut butter. Oh well!

We got Paul some books for his birthday. His favorite one is the Springtime Little Blue Truck book. It has flaps that you can lift.

Reading his new book with daddy

He mostly got money for his college account from his guests (yay!!) but he got a few physical gifts. This little scooter bike from my parents was his favorite gift. We can't wait for the weather to warm up so he can use it outside on our sidewalk.

He did not want to sit on others' laps all that much during the party but I did snap a quick picture of him sitting on my sister's lap.

It was a really nice celebration. Paul might not have been a fan of all of the attention, but I loved seeing my parents, siblings, and their family. I think Paul just takes after his dad and does not like a lot of attention. He likes to look around at others, but having lots of people looking at him is no bueno!

And now I will take a break from Paul-centric posts unless there's something really notable to share!