finley's first birthday: a monkey party!

Remember this post? Unbelievably that was over a year ago! My sweet little baby girl, Finley, turned one year old this month. Alarming the way a year can fly by. And astonishing how in the span just one short year. a little person can grow and develop and become an incredible being full of personality.

Finley is a lovely little girl. She is sweet, spunky, easy-going and yet vocal and opinionated at times. She understands so much, and loves to make us laugh. She adores her older sister Sage. She smiles a lot at strangers and is quite a charmer. Physically, she is super coordinated and rolled over at 2 months, crawled at 7 months and walked at 11 months. I think she will get what she wants out of life.

Finley was given a Jellycat monkey when she was born and it quickly became her best friend. She loves Monkey and talks to it, hugs it, kisses it. So even though a 'monkey' birthday party wasn't exactly the most original theme, we just had to do it!

I didn't go all out here! I can go really nuts with decorating and matching colours but I held myself back and really wanted to throw a party on a low budget. Decorating with photos from the year helped a lot. Here are some pics from Finley's first birthday party...

Finley and beloved Monkey

I designed the invitations, setting the tone with a pink and green colour scheme.

UPDATE: These customized, printable monkey invitations are now available in my Etsy shop here!

Pink and green flowers - cheap flowers! I've never used carnations before but they actually looked pretty good in these old juice bottles I held onto. Tablecloth is from Walmart and was $2.

We kept things pretty simple...

...but I used a lot of photos I had taken of Finley in her first year. I usually take a photo of her on her monthly 'birthday' sitting in a white chair, and displayed each month here in an old window frame.

Instead of a candy bar, here is a kid's snack bar! Much cheaper than candy but still delicious.

By total mistake I happened upon these cool printable monkey masks for $5 at Caravan Shoppe. I printed them, cut out the eyes, and taped them to dowels.

The kids had a blast with the masks!

 

Simple tablescape.

 

This was a Pinterest idea...to put washi tape on cups! The tape pretties up the plain/cheap plastic glasses but it also allows guests to write their names on there so that the cups didn't get lost.

Target recently opened in Canada. And I was happy to find these cool plates and napkins in the pink and green colour scheme.

In the past we've had grand outdoor barbeques that involved lots of cooking. Not this time. We were smart. Pizza and salad! Yummy and simple.

And it's a good thing we didn't plan a barbeque because that is sleet you see on the window there. Yes, it snowed on May 12th! Usually it rains on any outdoor party I plan. But snow...that was a new one! So much for the jumping castle we had ready to go.

Here is my huge photo wall! I taped up photos of Finley from the year using washi tape. What I learned: some washi tape doesn't like to stick on walls. Half the photos had fallen on the floor the next morning (yes, the morning of the party). I had to re-tape all of the photos using painter's tape on the back! The washi tape still looked pretty though.

 

My sister, Auntie Shayna, made these yummy chocolate banana muffins

(photo taken by Matthew Segal)

 

My other sister, Auntie Melanie, bought this yummy monkey cake! Truly it was chocolate bliss. It was from Cakes by Stephanie.

Here is proof that the cake was so good...(photo taken by Matthew Segal)

...the birthday girl started eating the plate to get every last morsel of chocolate!

(photo taken by Matthew Segal)

So did she enjoy her birthday cake? Ummm...yah!!

 Loot bags with custom monkey stickers and washi tape of course.

What a great party it was! Despite the snow and the fact we couldn't use the jumping castle. Wishing the happiest of first birthdays to my sweet little girl. Happy birthday Monkey!