Let the celebration begin!

Did I mention that this little guy turned one last week? I'm going through the typical parental shock of how quickly he's growing up.

 We decided to have a small family party, and I didn't really have a theme in mind, I just tried to think of things that Ollie might like and it ended up working out pretty well.  He loved all the doilies that we had hanging up for Valentine's Day.  He spent ages getting us to blow on them and watching them move and he tried and tried to blow them himself so I really wanted to have something hanging from the ceiling that you could blow on and move.  I ended up just hanging some star garlands from the party store, and I strung up some party hats too (they look like a mess in this photo because I couldn't get a good angle).

Ollie got right to work blowing on them and smiling so I guess they did their job.

We put rainbow colored pinwheels all over the yard (we stocked up on them at the dollar store) and he loved looking out the window and watching them twirl.

We put a few extras around the house too.

 I also printed out some black and white copies of pictures of Ollie making faces and added party hats to them and put them up on the strings that I still have hanging down the hall from Christmas cards and Valentine sayings.

Speaking of party hats, I went party hat crazy.  I added pom-poms to hats for guests

 I made a simple hat for Ollie

 And I made surprise party hat favors for the guests to take home (which I meant to decorate, but I never got around to it)

I filled them with things that would move in the wind: tiny kites, fringed party whistles, touchable bubbles, and I had to add a little chocolate too since this was really mostly a grown-up party.  Then I just wrapped them up in lots of layers of crepe paper.  I got the idea from these surprise Santa hats.

Ollie is so easy to please, so far we've left everything up because it makes him so happy.