Tiny Prints + A Happy Birthday

 I have something very special to share with you. My little r turned 2 in December and the Mr. and I had big plans to celebrate at our favorite park. I planned on designing the invites myself and way back in September we ventured out as a family to do a little photo shoot of our little guy. You know, the weather was super pretty, sunny clear blue skies gorgeous.

Then I was contacted by Tinyprints and they offered to let me try out their birthday invitations for free. :) I quickly said yes as I'm a fan of the beautiful designs they offer and my Mr and I picked this bright and happy design.

I think it fits our little guy perfectly :) I had been collecting zoo themed items throughout the year but i knew i didn't want the invitation to scream "zoo" theme. I mean we're party animals and all but i loved this cute picture of our little guy & his pal Giraffe. Totally adorbs. The design complements the colors in the photo so well. Yay :)

I was even more impressed when we had them in our hands. The print quality + paper stock is impressive. This is the graphic designer side talking ;) I'm pretty particular about paper and print quality not just because its my job but because it makes a huge difference in presentation and detail. I can't tell you how much our family and friends loved them too! I love the photo in the back. I think it makes the perfect little gift to our loved ones so they remember our little guy. Pretty clever designing Tinyprints ;)  Once i had the invitations, I pretty much used it as my color inspiration for party decorating. So bright and happy !

The main reason for the zoo theme was because throughout the year we enjoyed monthly visits to our local San Diego Zoo. It was awesome to get to experience the joy of discovery with Little r. He LOVED the animals. We had such a good time we even made it a tradition as part of every visit to include a trip to the photo booth at the zoo. I framed our photo strips and added a little quote from Good ol' Mister Rogers for added fun.

And then I took some colorful washi tape and taped a few photo strips to our walls both on the fridge and in our photo wall. Sometimes you just need to go casual. Little r gets a kick seeing them. I love them because it's really hard to get a fun photo together. It's usually one of us and little r. As silly as we look thankfully photobooth pics call for funny looking people. that would be us lol!

The sad part was that the day of the party it was super windy + cold and just your typical Winter day in San Diego. Mostly leaving you to stay home and cuddle up warm under a blanket. But we braved the weather together with our sweet family & friends. We decorated what we could and everything was blown all over the place. Oh december birthday people. i do sympathize with you. The weather is just not cooperative :(

The good thing was that we had plenty of luck untangling all my garlands I worked so hard on + refrosted a few left over cupcakes and I recreated this special day and forever capture it the way i pictured it in my head :) Plus, leftover birthday cake tastes SO good. And these pictures are 100 times better than that cold blustery day. Albeit it didn't stop our little guy from having fun with family & friends. And that was so heartwarming to see. He's such a trooper. I'm the crazy one lol!

I realized that i was only hurt because after spending what seemed like countless hours on little details like cutting out elephants + tigers + bears from fondant and baking the cupcakes etc you want everything to be perfect. right?!

These are the pics i will keep forever and look back on. And it makes me smile. I loved that when I was redecorating the living room little r kept asking if it was his birthday again. hahaa! He loved seeing all the garlands up looking so festive. It made reshooting the party even more fun. He stopped to take every detail in. "Mommy look! Elephant!" "Cupcake", one of his first words lol! He even broke into song singing "Happy birthday" hahaa!

It was a very happy birthday indeed. Thank you Tinyprints for your inspiration and beautiful product. My little guys invitation is still up on our fridge. We love it. It's funny because everyone says that at this age they won't remember it. Well in this day in age, I think they will have a pretty good idea of what kind of day it was. With these little details preserved via photographs I can't wait for us to look back on them someday and see how much love was poured into every detail. At least that's what I hope. My heart is happy. As i sit back after editing these photos + with family & friends from our celebration months ago. It was a good day.

Yep, I'm perfectly content. 

XO,

-d