Paige's One-derful Party

We had Paige's first birthday party on Saturday! I wanted to have it early in the month to try and separate it from Christmas parties for family and friends and also separate it from Drew's birthday since their birthdays are 12 days apart. We had such an amazing time celebrating our littlest love.

Drew's first birthday party was a Winter One-derland, and I loved that play on words, so we worked with our wonderful card maker and came up with 'Oh, what a one-derful year!' for her theme. I thought the invitation cards came out perfect!

From that we ended up decorating with a rainbow theme. I have always loved rainbows and have never done a rainbow party, so I had a lot of fun with it. I decorated very simply and got 2 bouquets of balloons and a big '1' balloon and then found a rainbow tissue paper tassel banner on Amazon. I found some paper plates at Target that were for a unicorn party, so they were perfect too!

I took down our stockings to hang the banner.

Presents mixed with Christmas decor! #thiswillbeeverybirthdayforPaige

I made the same cupcake as I did for Trent's first birthday but found a healthy recipe, so it was more like bread and didn't rise as much, so it was kind of a mini-cupcake. The icing was mostly Greek yogurt and cream cheese, so it wasn't really the kind for piping. I added some gold sugar sprinkles and think it turned out cute!

I found an easy way to pipe rainbow icing, and I think the cupcakes turned out really cute!

I found the perfect party dress at Wal-mart online. How cute is my little {almost} 1-year-old?!?!

Silly cousins!

Getting ready to sing to the birthday girl!

Not sure just what is going on...

Hmmm...

All done!

Her presents got opened by her siblings, cousins, and friends. Ha!

We can't miss an opportunity for a #SwopeSix photo op

We partied hard until about 10:00 PM with some of our friends and I was asleep at 10:30, ha.

The aftermath!

And Sunday morning checking out all the presents!

We love this little girl beyond words, and I am so looking forward to soaking in the next few weeks.

Oscar Movie Review: Lady Bird

Allison and I have been eagerly anticipating starting our Oscar movie watch for a few month, and we're finally able to get to the movies, yay! This year has been kind of slow for movies for us as I adjusted to another kid, so for lots of reasons it's exciting that we're back at it. {grin}

Our first movie of Oscar season was Lady Bird starring Saoirse Ronan who we both LOVED from Brooklyn.

Plot: In the early 2000s, an artistically-inclined seventeen year-old comes of age in Sacramento, California.

Review: Once again, Saoirse did a great job as the lead character, Christine 'Lady Bird'. It was fun to go back to the early 2000s and watch Lady Bird come into her own during her senior year of HS at a Catholic school where she doesn't feel like she fits in. I know I laughed A LOT at some of the Catholic references - to the point where I think Allison was embarrassed to be sitting next to me. The movie felt pretty real to me with moments of humor, friendship growing pains, mother-daughter struggles, finding your place in your family, young love... Where the movie lost me is it felt really similar to Boyhood but not as cool since Boyhood was filmed over 10 years. I can understand the potential Oscar nomination, but if Boyhood couldn't win Best Picture, I'm doubting this can. If Saoirse gets a Best Actress nod, it will totally be deserved. Rating: B+