One Lump Or Two

After the last week I have come to the conclusion that planning your first born's 1st birthday party is most likely right up there with planning their wedding...at least for this proud Mama. To be honest, we have been wanting to have all of our friends over for a while now and celebrating the Little's life was the perfect opportunity. We had a lovely tea party in our garden with our family and friends. We had an English tea party to be exact, to honor the relatives, who indecently don't like tea, but say it's time for tea when it is really time for dinner. I have never understood this statement, but there you go, she will learn that in England, when it's time for tea, it is time to eat!
Right,
back to the party. It was so nice, we had finger foods, hats, Japanese lanterns, and of course tea. Hope you enjoy all these pics, but I just didn't want to leave anything out!

Here's the birthday girl

She might not remember one bit of her first birthday party, but she really did enjoy herself. She squealed with delight all day!

Mr. Jones and I. Yes, I wore a huge black hat, a fancy dress, and pearls, b/c one always dresses up for a tea party. I did try to buy Mr. Jones a plaid golf hat, but he "claimed" it would be a waste of money. Pffff, it was her first birthday and it WAS a tea party!

The details:

This is Beth, she and I were members of the abandoned wives club last week, so Tuesday night she came over and help me decorate these tea pot cookies that were our party favors!

Here are the cookies. They were so cute, the perfect favor to thank our guests for spending an afternoon with us!

The dessert

The food- if you look closely you can see the 1 million flies that showed up uninvited to dance across our food.

This is one of two banners we had hanging...sorry no pic of the other. It said Libby's Tea Party."
This one had our favorite pictures of Libby from her each month of her life!

I brought all the inside furniture out...

Here's the tea and the tea cup tower that I arranged in color coded order that my Dad knocked over right before the guest arrived...I laughed!

The Guest list:

I actually have a picture of all of our guest sitting on the swing wearing a party hat, but that would take up a lot of space, so here are a few shots of our guest having a fabulous tea party time!

Some of my favorite people, Aunt Ju-Ju, Aunt Di, Lindsey, and Jill drove all the way down from Baltimore just for the party!!!! Big, giant, heart shaped love to all of you!

Mingling

The prettiest cousins I have ever seen!

Baby Katie, the youngest member of our party, just two weeks old and looking like a little cherub.

The boys playing catch
Here's is baby Katie, and her mom, grandma, and Jessie. Speaking of Jessie, she doesn't look like she is carrying two babies in her belly, but she is. I call them Maggie and McKenzie, but she's keeping the names all to herself...Oh this is my favorite...these handsome gents are Libby's buddies Aiden, Charlie, and Bastian. I like to think they are battling for her affection, but really I think they hope she doesn't mess with their toys or steal their snacks!

The presents: All I can say is we are blessed beyond measure with wonderful friends and family



and finally....
The cake:

This beautiful little tea pot cake was made lovingly by Katie's grandma and it was a hit

She wasn't sure at first...

but soon she realized that cake was the piece of the puzzle that had been missing from her life

Look at her go!

We really weren't sure when to stop her

In the end we did, but she loved every minute of it!

Days like this are fleeting and to far between...but turning one is just too important to limit to one day so we started early and do plan to celebrate again in London on the actual day! Stay tuned for that post. I'm sure it will be filled with my blubbering and bumbling on about how my baby is all grown up...
Until then, here is our almost one year old, at the end of the her party still smiling and happy that all her friends came to tea.