I used to love parties. I loved to entertain, make fabulous meals, and show people a memorable night regardless of the occasion. With the addition of 3 kids, party planning certainly isn’t what it used to be! It is still fun to get together with friends and their families, but fancy four course meals have been replaced with pizza, wings, and potluck dinners where everyone pitches in due to lack of time, energy, and wherewithal to come up with new and exciting menus. So, when my husband uttered the words “What day do you want to have Ben’s 1st birthday party” I cringed, then I cried thinking about our LAST 1st birthday party, our LAST baby…I knew what I had to do. I went into “crazy crafty mama” overdrive. I’m sure at least a couple of you out there know what I’m referring to, right? Where it would be easier to buy it, but more thoughtful and cute to make it???? Where thoughts of craftiness come to you in the middle of the night and you must answer the call right away before the thought escapes you??? Where you do things that are, in others eyes, “a waste of your time and energy” but to you, its the “piece de resistance” of the party??? Yeah, I thought some of you might know what I was talking about!
My Christmas gift from my mother in law was a Cricut machine. I can’t tell you how much I adore this machine. Every time I turn that machine on, I’m in awe of the sheer genius of this invention! I’m no scrapbooker, but this thing does so much more! Take a look at what I did with it for the party! 
I also made this birthday balloon wreath which I found on 
www.howdoesshe.com
The tutorial on this calls for 144 balloons…I used 233, then had a contest to see who could guess how many balloons I used…we had fun with that! I had a $5 gift card to Starbucks for the adult’s closest guess, and a helium balloon for the closest kid’s guess.
Turns out, after all of this, my little guy wasn’t really into the party…he seemed utterly horrified by the thought of others oohing and awing over him and thought we were all nuts when we all broke out into song with happy birthday. I was happy with it all though…everything turned out beautifully and we spent the day with those that mean the most to us. I couldn’t have asked for a better day or a better 1st year with my last baby…sniff, sniff…
you can do that 