Judd's Superhero FIRST Birthday {the decor}

How is it that he is one?!?!
Judd is one years old.
Twelve months more like (because that sounds like he is still a baby).
As much as I was excited to celebrate my little man's first this weekend, I was in disbelief that it has been an entire year. Some days sure were long but that year? It was way too short!
His official birthday was Sunday October 28th but we celebrated on the Saturday the 27th. It was just the perfect amount of people, everyone enjoyed the company and by the little food left over, I'm hoping that means they were satisfied with the food as well!
When Judd was in the hospital for the second time at 3 months old I couldn't help but think of what a tough little guy he was. He had gone through stomach surgery at 15 days old, had caught MANY of Ava's colds, and was on his second round of RSV. I told him he was mommy's hero. And that, my friends, is when his first birthday theme of "Superhero" was decided. I knew there were going to be plenty of years in the future that he'd want to have superhero parties and that was fine, but this year it was just SO fitting.
I didn't want to use specific Marvel superheroes for his party because that was not the focal point of this Superhero theme. The focal point was Judd! So I chose to decorate with generic child superhero characters, stars, pictures of Judd and incorporating the colors apple green, red, and cornflower blue.

This is the only picture I have of the entire food table. I took it with my phone so it's poor quality.
 

We served "Heroes" (subway sandwiches) with Power Packed Chips", "Kryptonite" (monster munch with green candy melts instead of almond bark), "Kapow Kabobs" (fruit skewers), and "Power Sticks" (candy coated pretzel rods).

The desserts were all homemade and included almond flavored cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese icing, vibrant green cake pops, various iced cookies, and superhero cookie dip with spiderman graham crackers. I am so thankful for my talented friends who made the delicious deserts!
The drink station. We served superhero punch (red white and blue punch consisting of cranberry juice, blue frost gatorade, and sprite) and party themed water bottles which I don't have a picture of either.

Back to sweets...Instead of doing favor bags I wanted to do a candy buffet. I've always wanted to do this sort of set up so I thought it would be perfect for our front "formal dining room" area. Well, I have this slight obsession about me that once I get something in my head I HAVE to do it. I lack self control I suppose. Otherwise I would have vetoed this great idea once I realized just how pricey candy is. I had no idea!! I tried to justify it by telling myself that Halloween would be a few days later and I could give away any unused candy. Except then I didn't want all the candy to be wrapped candy. Ughhh! I am my own worst enemy sometimes. Anyway, the candy buffet looked pretty neat and it was fun to set up. BUT! We have WAY TOO MUCH candy left over and I can't really give trick or treaters a handful of exposed jelly beans can I?

Candies were vanilla tootsie rolls, hot tamales, rasperry laffy taffy, red apple jelly belly, green apple licorice, cherry gummy bears, candy stars, blue marshmallows, apple candy sours and blueberry suckers.
This next table set up was off to the side of our kitchen and it was my "Judd table". The window ledge held his monthly pictures. I made a city scape with the monthly pictures the building billboards. I saw various city scapes on Superhero party sites and thought this would be a cool idea for the monthly pictures.

My friend Sarah made the "J" superman sign and the Subway art of his 12month milestones. I love the Subway art so very much! I hung it up on his wall in his room and know it will be something I always treasure. Sarah also made his invitation, party printables, and candy bag stickers.
We had a photobooth set up and I had great intentions of getting at least one picture of every guest at his party since of course Judd won't remember it. I wanted to make a cool photobook with everyone's name labeled next to the picture. But you know what they say about best laid plans...

This is when my plan started to crumble. I was yelling for Aaron to come get in the picture and right about this time he locked his keys in his car while bringing in the Subway sandwiches, 10 guests showed up at the same time and I needed to greet them...so yeah.

                                      
Hahaha!!! It was a cute idea and I'm glad we still got a few pictures!

Back to my first thought of Judd's party theme; I knew I wanted to have party guests donate to Cook's Children's Hospital in lieu of gifts. I remember Ava's first birthday and how it was a great celebration but the gifts were just unneccesary. A kind gesture and fun for the parents yes, but they are just too little to understand why on earth they need to sit still and open presents and then the mass overhaul of toys and clothes was just too much! It stressed Ava out and the mess and clutter stressed us out. It seemed so fitting for Judd to become a member of the "Peter Pan Birthday club" and I look forward to telling him what his party guests gave to in honor of his first birthday.

                  

This is where guests put their donation.

I will share more pictures of his guests and the birthday boy himself in the next post! Thanks so much to sweet Sarah, my lifesaver on more occasions than I care to admit, for taking the pictures of the party decor!