We officially have a ONE YEAR OLD. To start it off, for those of you that don’t know – Mike worked in baseball for the past 11 years, so our kids (mainly Blake) grew up watching baseball at a ballpark or on TV. We are a baseball family! It was without hesitation that we chose a baseball theme for Graham’s first birthday and a Yankees theme at that. Having an event planner background, I never shy away from planning a party and I wanted to go all out for our little guy because all of our family couldn’t be there due to COVID (F- COVID, am I right?). We got super lucky with the weather on the party day and were able to host it outside. We chose to have it at my in-laws because they have a HUGE backyard so that everyone who came could socially distance from one another.
Since moving to Edmonton we have taken a huge pride in our city and we support local whenever we can so the majority of the vendors were local to Edmonton.
THE FOOD
Everything our family does typically revolves around food. Birthday parties are no different. I wanted to keep with the ballpark theme and COVID friendly options for serving (so guests weren’t all sticking their hand in the same place). I went to TGP and purchased all of the individual containers, cups, etc. I also purchased individual chip bags, crackerjacks, and popcorn from TGP.
Costco was our next stop where we made sure to get hot-dogs, buns, beers, juice, and water – everyone knows when you need ALOT of something Costco is the place to go. Not to mention their hot-dogs are amazing.
In addition to hot-dogs, we wanted our guests to have the option of chicken fingers. One of my favorite family friendly restaurants in Edmonton makes THE BEST kids chicken bites and that place is none other than Central Social Hall. I can’t say enough about how amazing Jesse and his team are. I messaged Jesse to even see if this was possible and he immediately introduced me to his team I told them what I needed and when I needed it and they made it happen. EVERYONE LOVED THE CHICKEN, I mean even adults were going back for seconds. {Huge thank you to the guys at Central for this!!}
Instead of going with cake or cupcakes for all of our guests I worked with the incredibly talented Shawna Brown of Brown Sugar Custom Cookies for individually wrapped sugar cookies for each person. I had an absolute blast working with Shawna. I went back and forth for a week on ideas for different designs for the cookies. Honestly the cookies may have been my favorite part. She knocked it out of the park {no pun intended}. She books up pretty fast but the best way to reach her is via Instagram and her handle is @brownsugarcustomcookies. She is very responsive and the cookies tasted as good as they looked!
Graham’s smash cake was made by my mother in law and it was in the shape of a jersey with his name and the number one on the back. The cake came out so cute and all of the cousins and his big sister helped him tear it apart.
DECORATIONS + PARTY FAVORS
I have been watching people do these crazy balloon garlands for years and I wanted one so bad. Luckily the lady in charge of Party and Confetti brought my baseball balloon cloud dreams to life. Over at Party and Confetti she has so many different sizes and price options for balloon clouds and garlands – I will be doing one of these for every event moving forward. She showed up to set up Graham’s balloon cloud and was in and out in 20 minutes – she is a freakin’ balloon wizard. Her Instagram handle is @partyandconfetti and was also great to work with.
I went to Party city for all of the Yankees theme decorations as well as all of the goodies I put in the kids gift bags. Gift bags included double bubble, squishy baseballs, baseball bracelets ( the rubber and the slap kind), and glow sticks.
The only other items not purchased in Edmonton were purchased from Canadian ETSY store owners. The ONE sign for Grahams highchair and both Graham and Blake’s shirts they wore to the party.
I am so sorry for the delay of this post but some of you may know that at the end of Graham’s party Blake took a nasty spill out a sliding glass door and broke her arm – so I wasn’t quite ready to think about his party until now. She is in week 3 of a cast and we have a few more weeks to go but man is she a trooper. In addition to her breaking her arm, her Notorius BIG sister shirt was cut apart by paramedics but it was also purchased from ETSY.
All in all Graham’s first birthday was a success. We did our best to have a COVID friendly party (we provided hand sanitizer and masks for those who wanted it upon entering the party). We were grateful for the close friends and family who were able to make it and celebrate with us. If I missed anything or anyone needs help planning parties I LOVE event planning so don’t hesitate to drop me a note.
Happy Planning!
AK
The Blake Rose Life 