Zachary's 1st Birthday Shell-abration!!

Zachary's 1st birthday has come and gone and it seems like I still haven't had a minute to sit down and relax!  I have a feeling that that is going to be the norm with his birthday being so close to the holidays.  We had his birthday this past Saturday and I think it went great  My mother-in-law came down Thursday with my 6 year old niece and 4 year old nephew and my Aunt flew in late Friday night so we had a full house.  We spent Friday prepping for the party and had this whole elaborate meal planned but finally I was just too stressed and said "chuck it" and ended up calling Little Caesars and ordering 13 pizzas.  Let me tell you, the weight lifted off my shoulders was HUGE!

Friday night was stressful to the max and ended up with me in tears.  You see, for Samantha's 1st and 2nd birthdays I made these awesome birthday banners with a picture from each month of that year.  I had every intention of doing the same for Zachary but God seemed to have other plans.  I used my Cricut to cut out little turtles and I feel like for every nice turtle that cut, there were 3-4 turtles that came out looking like they were eaten by a dog...if they came out at all.  Finally though, I got all the pieces cut out.  Then I had to get the pictures.  My husband set up an external hard drive a while back which is where we store all our photos.  It is super slow when you access it over wireless and I didn't want to sit at the desktop so I decided to suffer through the long wait times and do it all from my laptop.  After 24 hours I finally had a picture selected from each month of Zach's first year.  Once they were all on the Target site, I somehow opened an edit screen for one of the pictures.  I clicked the back button to return and all of the pictures were gone!!  I couldn't believe it.  So I set to upload them all again.  I don't know what happened, but after all 13 pictures were uploaded, they disappeared a second time!!  As I was about 1/3 of the way into uploading them for the 3rd time, I realized there was a button on the bottom that said "Recent Uploads".  I clicked that and, of course, there were ALL my pictures.  Oy!  I selected the 13 I needed and you guessed it, the move on button didn't work.  I closed my browser in hopes that it would work when I re-opened.  Got into Target and the recent uploads folder was empty!  Ugh!  I finally got them uploaded a 4th time and sent them straight to Target.  Once I picked them up, I realized that the 4x6 pictures were just too big for my turtles.

Home I went to upload yet again.  I got them uploaded and sent off to Target a second time to print as 3.5x5's.  I went the next day to pick them up and when I got there, they hadn't been printed.  The lady printed them quickly for me and I was on my way.  As I got to the car, I decided to peek at them just to make sure and lo and behold, it was my original order.  I went in and told her I had placed a new order the day before but as she looked through the computer she found that there was no record of it.  Even though I had a confirmation email, confirmation number, everything.  The manager told me to go home and upload yet again and resend and I could have the photos for free.  Back home I went and uploaded for the millionth time and sent them over.  After an hour, I called to make sure they had them before I drove over.  Can you guess what happens next?  If you guessed that there was no record of my order you would be correct!  At that point I decided to just give up.  I went through and found all the pictures AGAIN, put them on a memory card and went back to Target to use the little kiosk to print my pictures.  Thankfully they were nice and helpful there and I did end up getting my pictures for free.  What a mess!  I came home and put my banner together and I think it turned out pretty amazing if I do say so myself.

Saturday morning was a race to get everything set up, pick up balloons, pizza's etc.  All of the paper products came from Birthday in a Box.  I think I just randomly found this website on google and I have to say, I loved them!  Their prices were super affordable and the stuff came fast.  I ordered a week before the party and it came with days to spare.

How cute are these napkins?!  I was super impressed with these as there was no indication on the website that there was any print on them besides the "Happy 1st Birthday" and turtle on the front.  I was shocked to find that there was also design on the back and BOTH inside panels!  A+ right there!

Thankfully we had a neighbor making his cake and bringing it over so we didn't have to worry about that!! (If you would like more info about the baker, please message me and I will pass it along!)  This was the cake table.  We had turtle cupcakes as well as a cake with a fondant turtle on top.  It was seriously so cute!!  I happened to find a candle at Target that matched the theme perfectly so I was super excited about that.

Then Zach had his own little smash cake.

We probably should have just went with pizza from the start since Zach loves it!

Time for cake!!  Think he liked it?  ;-)

He had such a fun party and was completely wiped afterwards!

And not to forget the big sister who was SO excited for the party.  She talked about it for days before hand!  Now she's getting excited for her birthday.  Too bad it's still a few months away!

Thank you so much to everyone who came and celebrated with us!!