Coco's Flamingo Pool Party 1st Birthday

Colette had her 1st Birthday party this past weekend at our neighborhood pool. I turned to Etsy and had this awesome invite created.

Address goes in the middle box.

I had to order another custom cake from Eileen the cake lady. This is the smash cake.

The ombre upside down ruffle cake. The top layer was vanilla with lemon butter cream filling. The bottom was chocolate with cookies and cream filling. The flamingo toppers came off ebay.

Auntie Shelly purchased this gorgeous bow for Coco bean. Someone wasn't a fan for very long though.

Swimsuit is a mudpie via amazon. She had an adorable matching dress but we just never changed her into it.

Hadley was our bow wearer for the rest of the party.

 She even wore an adorable flamingo dress over her swim suit.

We set up a pop-up tent and fans to keep flys and not melt the cake. David of course was the mastermind behind the setup. It worked so good though, because it was a scorcher out. Max has a flamingo bathing suit on, but not sure I took a pic of him close up.

Dancing time.

We brought the blow up pool thinking she would be happy splashing in there so we could grill the food and socialize, but in true 1st birthday diva behavior she just kept climbing out.

Gigi and Coco in their matching flamingo outfits.

It worked out great to grill the food right by our party location. Adam and Christie just had their baby so David had to take the grilling duties on (normally Adam is our griller).

We kept decor simple with mostly pink table cloths and a few bigger flamingo findings.

I got these great flamingo drink holders from oriental trading. They are very cool until you try to put them in the water like you think they should be used for... Tipped right over. We tried numerous types of beverages.

Most exciting of all was our cousin Heather returned from a year in China teaching abroad! She literally got off a plane or 2 from traveling 30 hours, grabbed a shower? and came to the party! We were so glad she did. We missed her!

2 day old baby Owen even made his first public appearance!

Had to demonstrate our beverage holders.

 

 Family cake photo. You can kind of see Max's trunks here.

Singing Happy Birthday and Max helping to blow out the candle.

She says ok can I dig in now... Check out her hand sampling the goods.

Home girl likes to eat some cake. She just takes her time in doing it. We could have left her for a few hours and she would have been happy.

 

A few of the happy guests watching Colette. 

I broke a piece of actual cake off to give to her and she enjoyed that as well. Auntie Gina sneaking a pic with the birthday girl.

 

We are so thankful for everyone that came to the party. I was too busy wrangling a crazy 1 year old to take any more photos of guests, but all of David's family came to celebrate, plus a few neighbor friends and family. We can never do anything small, it's just not how we roll. We are so lucky to be so close to everyone! 

Still waiting on her official 1 year pics to do an official post, but she went to the doctor this week and she is healthy as can be. Love you Coco bean!