happy birthday, merry christmas :)

happy birthday december babies! We celebrated little r's first birthday with a mini birthday party in our home a few days ago. Its so hard to plan december parties outside! I never really thought about it until now with our little guy. The morning of the party we woke up to light rain and next thing you know, by the afternoon the sun was shining and so bright. It's such moody weather :)  I loved it. it was perfect and our little guy didn't seem to notice since he was having a blast playing and sharing his toys with his 2 fun cousins. 

So does this garland look familiar to anyone? I had seen it in an at&t commercial early this summer and everytime the commercial came on i was always drawn towards the garland in the background hahaa :) I found this pretty wool garland at the rose bowl flea market early this month. It is even better in person! Little r loves looking at it as much as i do hehee.

see? he gave it a round of applause ;) jk. he was actually clapping at everyone cheering him on to smile for the camera. what a ham. Always the center of attention that silly guy. 

When i was planning his party i knew i wanted a cute zoo animal theme but not too over the top. So I bought a few cute bento goodies to decorate his cake and bento boxes for the kids to snack on at the party. i LOVE that sweet lion! And the lego candle is of course more for his daddy who is a die hard lego fan. they both were very fitting ;)

We had decided to take little r to the zoo for his birthday ( his first time ) and he LOVED it. he kept OOOOOH! and OH! at everything. here his is bird watching. he kept trying to whistle at them but it sounded like a funny hissing sound hahaa. poor birds.  

and here he is with his girlfriend the happy hippo. she loved the camera too. she kept going back and forth and bobbing up and down showing of her cute smile. little r got scared towards the end and i think he thought she was going to come through the glass. at least he has a new friend ;P

So this is our little version of our fun at the zoo. I LOVE the bright colors and animal figures. 

and party love inside the cake too! I made the cake again ;P Vanilla + strawberry filling & white fluffy whip frosting on top. I added orange and yellow layers for a bit of fun. I loved how it turned out, even more, i love that it was super yummy ;) The tiger agrees. ( i did eat this for breakfast the next day ha!)

The decorations were simple. I made this cute little shadowbox for the centerpiece. The r is a last years anthro ornament turned superstar surrounded by my lovely collection of felted balls. I kept buying them thinking i would make a garland out of them but in the end i loved them best all scrunched together here ;)  

so all in all, a very happy birthday was had. I am thankful for the blessing that our little r is to our family. He is a happy little guy. He is surrounded with friends a family who love him very much. And I am counting my blessings for that the most this year.  nothing we could ever buy him could ever matter more than that. 

so this is our second christmas as a family. ( also a bit of proof that my december daily has a least once page finished! hahaa! and then i turned it into our christmas card ;) i hope we show little r that christmas is all year blessings.  Not just one day a year.  so here's a little smile from us to you.  may your day be filled with love and blessings too many to count. 

We send you our happiest, merry christmas love,

xo 

d, mr.handsome & little r