The One with Fox's 1st Halloween Birthday Party!

The last two days have been a whirlwind of fun, food, friends, and mostly, FOX. It's on my 27 before 27 bucket list at #14 to throw Fox the most amazing Halloween-themed first birthday! I am delighted to check that one off the list :) Really though, Halloween has always been my favorite holiday so now that I have an October baby I have even more of an excuse to get excited and make a big ordeal out of it.

Friday the 14th was Fox's actual birthday so once Chris got home from school we had an official celebration. He opened presents from family sent with love. It's so fun to have a new family member to live vicariously through!

His reactions are truly genuine! Pure happiness!

My mom made him this cute, adorable, awesome, amazing, stellar, bewitching Halloween quilt! I'm pretty sure it's MY quilt now :)

He loves it!

A view of the whole shabang.

After Fox went to sleep for the night Chris and I stayed up late in the kitchen baking up a storm. We made our own chips by cutting Halloween shapes out of various kinds of tortillas using cookie cutters.Then we sprayed a cookie sheet with PAM, set the shapes in a single layer, sprayed them with PAM, salted them a bit, then baked them at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes per sheet.

Voila!

Saturday morning, party day, we woke up bright and early at 5:30am to start decorating. First step: take apart our bed to use the wrought iron frame as the centerpiece of the photobooth. We took Joey to doggy daycare and picked up a babysitter to watch Fox while we ran around like chickens with their heads cut off (ew). And did I mention it was like 90 billion degrees outside? I'm pretty sure I sweated my weight off by the end of the day. But, check it out, I think we transformed our patch of grass into exactly what I've been picturing in my mind's eye all along:

We draped the bushes aligning the two sides of the patch of grass with cheesecloth, the spooky drapes I made and held on to from last year, as well as felt Halloween shapes (like bats, cats a witch, crows, fences, and rats) I cut out many years ago and set up every October 1st. The tombstones I made were placed around the yard. Balloons in many colors along with pumpkins in all shapes, sizes, and varieties were the perfect finishing touch.

The food tables.

Black plates, clear cutlery, gray napkins, pumpkin bread, carrots and dip, the tortilla chips, brownies, pumpkin pie, and the drawing Chris's high school art teacher gave us as a wedding present.

A closer look of the chips. I love them! And they tasted really good!

The drawing | The spider and ghost pops arranged on a plate stand.

Oranges, spider web eggs, the pops, candy corn pizza, and more.

These spider web eggs were really easy to make! Bring eggs and 2 cups of blueberries to a boil, remove from heat and cover for 10 minutes, take the eggs out one by one and crack them with a spoon, put them in a bowl, pour the berries and water back over the eggs, and place them in the fridge until they cool. The eggs don't even taste like blueberries and what's left is a really cool spider web design imprinted on the layer just under the egg shell.

Failed attempt at a candy corn looking pizza. Still tasted good - how could it not with like five pounds of cheese?

Carmel chocolate covered pretzels (thanks for the recipe Alisha!), a ginormous chocolate birthday cake, chocolate cupcakes topped with roaches, decorated sugar cookies (thank you SOOOO much Melissa!), and Halloween Oreos.

A close up of the cute (and delicious!) sugar cookies.

The centerpiece. I found the vase on clearance at Target, walked around the neighborhood after a storm and picked up sticks, filled the vase with excess paper that's come in the mail, arranged the sticks, topped it off with moss leftover from the fake finger invitations, added some spider webbing for an eerie effect, then wrapped a burlap in a bow around the middle.

My favorite part - the candy bar!! goblin booty = assorted chocolate candies | wolves nails = candy corn | eye of dog = gumballs that look like eyes | rat droppings = peanut butter taffy | mummy's teeth = mints | frog tongue = peach rings | road kill skewers = assorted candies pierced onto bamboo skewers and arranged into black and orange sixlets | witch's fingers = black licorice

Water bottles wrapped with burlap, lace, cheesecloth, and/or muslin and Witch's Brew aka limeade.

Orange Crush and mini Coke bottles in an ice filled tub and decorative tombstones and pumpkins.

The Witch's Brew and cockroach cupcakes.

At the other table was the kid activities - namely sugar cookie decorating and drawing on mini pumpkins with colored permanent markers. In the middle was a set of mini apothecary jars filled with bits and baubles of nature.

At the end was a "guess how many pieces of candy are in this jar and whoever is closes wins" game. There were 228 pieces (plus or minus a few cuz guests and kidlets kept eating candy out of it, lol). Brian Miller guessed 222, but he was gone by the time I chose a winner, so the next closest was Dan Snow with 217. Good job guys!

This is the photobooth. Our bedframe embellished with a garland and lots of balloons, tombstones, pumpkins, felt shapes, a burlap dropcloth, and a pile of props.

Bob for apples. Self explanatory. Oh, funny/sad story, once upon a time there were 6 balloons wrapped around that mini pumpkin, but the wind eventually unraveled the strings and they went bye bye. Lesson learned - always tie the balloons in place!

Once everything was set up I took pictures then looked at my phone clock - 1:58pm - the party began at 2pm. Is that good timing or what?

The welcomed guests! (If you want your individual picture - you know how to reach me!) So sorry if I didn't get a chance to take your picture!

This picture makes me smile. The kids were actually into it! Hooray!

Pinata time!

Eventually it just fell off without bursting so we had to improvise and throw it in the air to knock all the candy out. The little 'uns went to town!

We gave Fox a piece to gnaw on.

Then it was time to sing to the birthday boy!

We gave him a piece all of his own to try. He picked at it for a bit.

Then he just made a mess of it all over himself.

Future bf/gf???

Fox has been skimping on his naps like what lately. So of course, right smack dab in the middle of his party is when he'd had enough and finally went down for a nap.

The highlight of the party was the bob for apples bin. Note to self: Next time I have a party with lots of kids 3 and under, simply fill up tubs with water and let them have at it!

Isn't he the cutest? I love Owen's costume!

At the end we put the three babies closest in age together for a pic - Beck (10 months), Fox (12 months), and Maya (11 months).

Cutie patooties!

Happy one year of being parents to us!

And happy first birthday Mr. Fox!

Not gonna lie, I'm so glad the party's over! It was everything I dreamed of and more! It was a whole lotta work, and Fox won't even remember it, but I will, and he'll see it through his scrapbook :)