We had so much fun celebrating Alaric’s first birthday! I wasn’t planning to do anything big since he is too little to care so I decided to organize everything myself.
The original plan was to have the birthday party at the park. I wanted an outdoorsy environment, daylight for the photos and an opportunity to throw the blankie on the grass and let him move around. Well, guess what? Few days before the event I saw the weather forecast and it said it was supposed to rain the day of the party! That’s something you never have to worry about in LA, what are the odds… We had to urgently move the party somewhere else and I had a brief moment of panic but then I found the cafe that could accomodate and everything worked out in the end.
I did have a color scheme in mind, got some ideas on Pinterest and ordered most of the things off of Amazon which made my life of a working mom so much easier. We got some ballons, some garland, matching shirt for the birthday boy, overall I am pretty happy with how everything turned out.
Of course, there were some funny hiccups. I decided to make Alaric’s smash cake myself and even though he wasn’t really going to eat it I wanted to keep it healthy just in case. I found an easy banana, apple sauce cake recipe on Pinterest and made the layers (which turned out great) and a frosting (which completely failed). It was so funny trying to make it thicker and stick to the cake, after a few tries I just had to go to the store and got one there, oh well.
Another thing was getting helium balloons. We showed up at the Party City couple of hours before the event. All I wanted is to get a couple helium ballons, number 1 and maybe a letter A and some random star or a heart or something. Turned out there is an hour wait for the balloons! What! In a very nice way I asked the lady to get me one ballon, just one, only one, and yay! We got our ballon, I felt so proud of myself since I really had to put my negotiating skills to a test this day figuring out the balloons situation and also the reservation for a table.
Alaric was excited to see everyone, he is such a friendly little guy. I was really amused at how surprised my friends were that he is so big and heavy haha, I am so used to carrying him. He is definitely not that tiny anymore though. One of my friends brought her 6 weeks old baby girl and I couldn’t believe that he used to be so small at some point too!
The big moment we’ve all been waiting for – smashing the cake – didn’t happen quite as planned. Even though Alaric was pretty intrigued by the cake in front of him, he was very delicate and started exploring by politely poking the frosting, it was so funny!
Overall, it was a really fun day! I am so thankful for all our friends and family who could come celebrate with us and Alaric loved all the wonderful thoughtful gifts he got:) 
P.S. It didn’t rain.
