Most of Avery's life, I questioned the need for a first birthday party. She doesn't know it's her birthday, so what's the point? But we decided if for nothing else, we should have one to celebrate surviving a year of parenthood. So I started to plan a first birthday party with the goal of it being small with close friends. With this in mind we landed on a small barbecue at a local park and the plan was to not go over the top.

As you're about to see, I didn't do so well with the not going over the top plan. Keep reading for a little peek into Avery's first birthday party!

I always knew I wanted to do Avery's theme colors of coral, blush, peach, and gold for the party. That was a no brainer considering I could reuse a lot of the decor from her nursery. With that, I took off running, one craft and/or Etsy purchase at a time.

I put my monthly growth photos to use at the gift table. I printed out the 5" square photos at Target and cut out the gold glitter labels with a Cricut.

I was struggling to come up with both an activity that would be good for the variety of people that would be attending. I don't know where the idea of decorating your own cupcakes finally came from, but that kind of brought everything together.

I ordered a variety of cupcake flavors with all white frosting, but the cake shop messed up and added different toppings for each flavor, but it still worked out. I also decided a cupcake-shaped smash cake was the way to go.

An assortment of cupcake decorations were organized into a bunch of small containers with small spoons to transfer the toppings.

Guest of all ages had a good time putting their personal touches on their cupcakes. And the cupcakes were soooo good. So I guess we can forgive the mistake with the cake shop's toppings.

Since all of Avery's baby friends were coming, we had Avery's new water table and ball pit on hand under a canopy alongside some blankets.

We reused the fabric garland that one of my friends made for my baby shower that also hung in Avery's nursery for a period of time and strung it up between two wooden posts cemented into buckets (handwork by my hubby). In front of that, we floated a giant gold letter A mylar balloon. A perfect backdrop for the gift table.

We displayed a super cute custom infographic alongside a request to predict what Avery will be when she grows up.

via Etsy

As a fun twist, we asked the guests to use an ink pad to hand stamp their card. The finished product will be placed in a scrapbook for Avery to look back on when she's older. Some of the guesses were a mom, a singer, a fashion designer, a space tourism pilot, and a chicken farmer.

Avery's cake smash was a smashing success. She loved it. But she was being very delicate about it. She kept picking off the little sprinkle fondant pieces off the cake to eat it. I had to push her hand into the cake to get a little of the frosting and cake.

I found a bunch of the cute little cupcake to-go containers and thought they'd be perfect party favors. We invited each guest to fill their cupcake up with snacks or candy of their choice as our thanks for celebrating with us. Considering we had guests of all ages and preferences, we had a variety of candy, chocolate, salty snacks, and, of course, the O puffs for our youngest guests.

We think Avery's party turned out beautifully and we're so grateful for everyone who came out to celebrate with us. And hope you enjoyed celebrating with us virtually!