Molly Sunshine's Sunshine Party

**LONG POST and TOO MANY GREAT PICTURES TO CHOOSE FROM.  ALSO, MY FORMATTING IS A NIGHTMARE AND I CAN'T FIX IT SO I'M POSTING ANYWAY:)**

Finally, here are the party pictures I've been alluding to for a couple of weeks now!  First of all, most of the pics you'll see in this post come from none other than the fantastic Ellen Adkins of ellen adkins photography.  Hands down best party trick I've ever pulled is getting someone to take all the pics for me so that I may party (and maybe even make it in a couple;).  She was lovely to have around and I still can't believe her work!  She's a senior in high school!! 

A little intro...one of Molly's many monikers, since before birth, has been "Molly Sunshine" and it's most definitely one she's lived up to and then some:)!  Even through all the doctor's visits, specialists, hospital admittances, surgeries, and casts, she still manages to be delightful.  In fact all those other things really fade right into the background when I reminisce through year number one and our pure joy over Miss Molly immediately come into focus and steals the whole spotlight.  Therefore a "You Are My Sunshine" party seemed to set the perfect tone for celebrating Molly's first year with us.  Well, the theme guest (the SUN) showed up in a big way that day...we had the most beautiful weather I'd seen in awhile and a breeze to top it off!

You saw the invites HERE so now here are the rest of the details...

Cupcakes seemed the easiest way to go.  They were a sunny lemon cake with homemade lemon buttercream icing.  Ryan made the toppers via photoshop (to match the CD favor cases) and I punched 'em out and glued 'em on a stick...voila!  decorated cupcakes!

Sunflowers are some of my favorites and with the word "sun" right in them they were a perfect fit for the decor.  You can see the bouquet of pineapple suns in the background below.  I got the idea off the front of a Family Fun magazine.  It actually showed flowers made of fruit on skewers but I cut notches in the pineapple, lost the "leaves" and added a melon ball in the center to fashion suns instead.  I froze them (because I ran out of room in the fridge) and by eating time a few of the suns were "setting" down the skewers.  Oh well:)  Oh, you can also see Molly's little personal cake below to the right of the sunflowers.

We served Mexican Surprise, which is a Roach entertaining recipe staple.  Perfect for a crowd because there's no actual cooking involved, you don't have to heat up your kitchen and most importantly Molly can eat most everything in it!

Another picture of the food.  Here you can see the banner I made and the sunset looking paper tablecloth I scored on clearance at Target for $1.50.  My master plan included changing out the old Burmese women charcoals for some Molly photos but that didn't happen.

Inside I set up a table of Molly paraphernalia.  Her baby book, footprints, family books I've made over the year, even a picture of the sunrise from the day she was born (a really neat gift from one of Ryan's coworkers).  I'm holding a scapbook page of part of Molly's hospital bracelet collection.  The bottom is a nameplate from our door from one of our Scottish Rite visits.

Almost all of Molly's cousins were able to be there.  Kara, Jonah and Wyatt were sick and couldn't make it at the last minute and boy did we miss them!  The other seven were there and were eyeing these favor buckets from the beginning!  The sun-shaped buckets were another bargain (this time at Big Lots on summer clearance for a quarter a piece!) Inside, for the big kids, there were Sun Chips, Sunkist fruit snacks, Sun-maid raisins, a Capri Sun drink, some tropical sun gum,  a glow stick, and a squishy ball that resembled the sun (to me anyway).  The babies got some applesauce, baby mum-mums and a magic towel washcloth...somewhat less thematic;)

Here's Sophi eyeing the goodie bags...but look whose bag she's eyeing...love it!

As soon as we'd settled on a theme Ryan and I started brainstorming a sunshine mix for party music.  He worked on narrowing the gazillion sun-themed songs to about 20 and made CDs and covers for family favors:

Outside I displayed 12 months of Molly pictures on the clothesline...

...and hung up an old shower curtain for a picture backdrop along with a barrel of sunshine-y dress up inspiration.

A couple of resulting images:

LOVE this one:)

Outside were more sunflowers, more yellow, etc.  The kid's tables were covered in paper with a crayon jar centerpiece but the crayons started melting before everyone arrived.  Hehe.  Ryan tied 12 orange and yellow hellium balloons to the fenceposts.  It was festive and like I said, the sun definitely showed up to make it even better!

Now on to the important things...the people:)

Here's the birthday girl:

We brought her spica table (birthday gift from Grandma and Granddaddy) outside so that she could be right in all the action.  This helped her to eat her supper, open her presents and dive into her cake.  She was thrilled to have everyone there.  I thought for sure she'd have the seemingly obligatory birthday baby diva meltdown at some pointbut we got by without that.  Molly really does enjoy being around people.

Swaylor (above) is Molly's junior by 3 months and Maggi (below) is her senior by 6 weeks.  What a lucky girl she is to have sweet cousins her age on both sides!

As you can imagine, Molly had plenty of help opening her beautiful gifts!

Cake time!!  The kids were a little upset at the size of the cake.  And then when I put the whole thing down in front of Molly they got really concerned!!!  The "M" on top was from the cake at thebaby shower my best friends threw way back when:)  Her cake was lemon with yummy cream cheese frosting.

Molly enjoyed the birthday song and was a little more tentative about diving into her cake than I thought.

She played in the icing for awhile before taking the first taste.

But once she got a taste she was sold:)

The spica table insured that her cast stayed cream cheese free but a bath was definitely in order after cake time!

An outfit change into a new dress from Aunt Tad, Uncle Josh and cousins:

What a wonderful time we had!  Molly, you have been a ray of sunshine in our lives since we found out you were coming.  We can't wait to see what blessings and challenges year number two brings!