The Birthday Party!

Jillian's birthday party was SO FUN!  

I'm not going to lie - I had the best time planning it.  I had been slowly working on the party for over 2 months! Every time we'd go somewhere I'd have my eyes out looking for things and gathering ideas.  SO FUN!!

Lots of family came in town to celebrate with Jillian:  Bama, Unchie, Nana, Papa, Aunt Debra, Uncle Adir, Uncle Shale, Aunt Shelby, second cousins Case and Cole with their parents Matt and Sarah and of course us - mom and dad!  We had quite a few friends make it too with a few babies in tow.  A couple other babies were out of town, but Jillian still had plenty of friends to party with.

Birthday Girl starting out the day eating breakfast.  Yep, we already had her hat on!

The party started at 11:30 and went until 1.  It was perfect timing; Jillian slept for 2 full hours and woke at 11:15.  Just in time to put her party dress on!  Here is a picture of the invitation:

Here are a few photos I snapped of decorations before everyone arrived:

The food tables

Her bedazzled highchair.  

(I stole the streamers idea from Kristen)

Sign leading into the baby play room

Play area

I made this to hang above the fireplace.  

It's a picture from each month - birth to 11 months.  

(It's still hanging now.  I can't take it down!  Love seeing her pictures)

I had an outfit made for her - this is the best picture I have showing the full dress.  

Yes - she was covered in bows!  ha!

Aunt Shelby giving Jillian her milk before everyone arrived.  

It took Jillian a few minutes to really wake up.

Starting to wake up

Caitlin with Jillian

Then everyone started arriving!  Jillian was not happy with everyone bombarding her house all at one time.  Jillian was really clingy and wasn't that interested in playing with her friends.  We did get her to play for a few minutes, and snapped lots of pictures!

Thinking about joining in on the ball pit fun....

Leila, London and Jones LOVED the ball pit.  They sat and played for probably 30 minutes.

Needing a little encouragement

She stayed for a couple minutes.  You can see she's already planning her escape route.
Look how proud Jones is with a ball in each hand!

And she was done.  Off to play with her favorite toy - the house.

Cole, Case, Jeff, Jillian - all the cousins!

As you can probably tell, Jillian really wanted to be held during her party.  

Whatever the birthday girl wants, we'll do!  Plenty of people wanted to hold her. 

Nana and Jillian.

We then cut the cake, sang happy birthday and ate dessert!  

We got Jillian her own smash cake (pictured further in the post) but decided Jillian was a little too flustered to enjoy that with 30 people watching.  So we did it with family later in the day.

Back to the main cake - I must say, this cake was fabulous.  It was strawberries and cream.  I got a 14" cake, but once all the icing and white chocolate stems were put on, it completely covered my 16" dish!  

Needless to say, we had about half left over.  YUM!  I would highly recommend Rush Patisserie.

That's the last picture I took from the actual birthday party.  Since we asked for no gifts, we opened all the family gifts after everyone left.  By this time it was 2:15 and Jillian was WAY over stimulated.  We got a couple good pictures before she made it clear she needed a break.  

I took her back to her room gave her a bottle and rocked her thinking for sure she would go down for a nap.  Instead she perked back up.  So out we went for more fun with the family. 

 I did take her out of her party dress.  

We then decided we should try the smash cake - and it was a success!  We started out with cheerios.

I LOVED her smash cake.  It was a little hard since it was in the fridge so we cut the back half off to make it easier to eat.  All in all Jillian had 2 to 3 big bites mostly of icing.

(Debra took a lot of photos during the smash cake, I'll post them later.)

She played for a few more minutes, and then she went down for a nap.

All her gifts:

Notice Jillian chillin' in her car?

That's the end of Jillian's fun Birthday Party!  She took a great nap and was off to bed early that night.  

My sister in law took a ton of photos, and once I get those I'll make another post :)