Even though Gia's First birthday isn't until this Saturday (the 5th), we had her birthday party this past weekend. That way, her Pop Pop, Gram and Aunt Audrey were able to come! This is the first in a series of several posts about her party... I decided to break it up a little bit so it wasn't quite so much of a photobomb all at once! First up: Inspiration & Invites!

INSPIRATION & INVITATIONS

I had so much fun coming up with a theme for her party. For months I looked through Pinterest, gathering ideas and inspiration, but nothing that was already out there "clicked" for me. I started thinking about things I liked and hope that Gia will like one day, and I remembered Giraffes. I've sorta started a giraffe collection for Gia, and hope that she likes them as she grows up, too. Her name starts with "G" just like giraffe, AND bonus- there was a baby giraffe born at the Cincinnati zoo around the same time Gia was born! So I started looking around for a cute cartoon giraffe to use on all of Gia's party decor. However, I couldn't find one that I really liked. As I was thinking about this, I remembered something awesome I had seen on Project Runway:All Stars. It was this dress from designer Kenley that served as my jumping off point of inspiration for her whole party:

I found this exact same fabric online and ordered 3 yards of it. I wasn't sure what I'd do with it at first, but knew I could use it for something. After that, I came up with some more inspiration for her party... here's what I came up with:

From there, I began making all of the decor accessories. I decided to incorporate some pink pennant banners into the decor, mainly because I have been wanting to make some for her bedroom as decoration and saw this as the perfect opportunity to create some really cute birthday decor that can double as room decor (and therefore be used more than just once!). So I went to Hobby Lobby and bought 3/4 yard of four different pink fabric prints. I made one banner with large flags and two smaller banners.

I also set to work on designing her invitation. That kind of set the pace for the rest of all the paper accessories (cupcake toppers, cake topper, food labels, favor bags, etc). We went to the park a few weeks before her party and did a mini birthday photo shoot. Here is the final picture that I used on her invitation:

(I hope to do a post later with more of these photos-- they were SO cute!) For the invitations, I mounted her picture on one side of bright pink card stock, then put this on the other side:

We had hoped to have the party at our house outside on our deck. Sadly, it rained that day so we wound up moving the festivities to the cafe at our church. Next post: the Decorations!