The Mustard Seed Family: The Making of A Lemonade Stand Birthday

I just love first birthdays. And I LOVE first birthday parties. When I was pregnant with Aubrey Lane, I would just daydream about the possibility of having a little girl and all the sparkle that went with it; her birthday parties being no exception.

So when Aubrey Lane was just a few months old, I already began to see visions of pink balloons and tissue pompoms along with a little girl in a white highchair digging in a pink cake.

I originally planned to have an ice cream social for her party, but... one day I happened across some decorations for a lemonade stand on Etsy, and I knew that her party needed a theme change. (ALL parties NEED a theme or color scheme, in my opinion)

So I started the planning.

I had Lane and my father in law make me a beautiful little lemonade stand. And then I painted it Gentle Dreamland Pink, a color from Walmart- it's a lemonade stand. It doesn't need Sherwin Williams paint.

Months before the party, I started the planning and collecting. I would grab a pack of tissue paper for pompoms every time I went to Hobby Lobby. I also knew I wanted to use Mason jars or some sort of vintage looking glass bottle to serve the lemonade in. Then one day, I picked up one of Lane's empty frappacino bottles (our weakness) to throw away, and I noticed it was the perfect shape. So we just started saving our bottles for about 4 months. We had 16 small ones and 16 large ones for the party.

Then I used my embroidery machine and mad crafting skills to make a sweet little party hat and pennant banner for her darling white wooden highcair.

The weeks before, my sweet friend Sarah came over and helped me make decorations using my cricut. (The first time I've used it for anything other than playing around.) We made her Happy Birthday banner and the little monthly clothespins to hang her monthly pictures from.

I also went to Brushfire in Denham Springs and painted Aubrey Lane a special plate to use each year for her birthday. It held her smash cake for her birthday.

Then Lane helped me with a little project to turn some old picture frames my mother in law picked up for me at Goodwill into sweet little chalkboards for the party... and other things.

All we did was paint the frame a glossy white and paint the glass pane with chalkboard spray paint. And voila...

And then my niece spent the night and helped me make more decor and lots of tissue pompoms.

We also used my Cricut again to make these precious tags for drink labels for people to hang on their lemonade bottles. Add in the pink and yellow paper straws I got from Etsy, and I knew it was going to be beautiful!

The week of, I think I lost my mind and set out on a tablecloth project. After several yards of burlap, blisters on my thumb, and a very late night, a too long but BEAUTIFUL ruffled table cloth was ready for its first event: my Aubrey Girl's first birthday party.