Party Recap...

This party was for my son’s first birthday. His birthday falls at the same time as both my husband’s and best friend’s birthdays. For the past seven years we’ve done a joint crawfish boil to celebrate, so I wanted to pull it all into one big swamp bash. The invitations were sent in cardboard boxes filled with newspaper, Spanish moss, a plastic alligator and an egg which had to be “cracked open” to find the invitation. We got such a fun reaction from guests thinking there ACTUALLY was a live animal inside the box as indicated by the sticker on the outside of the package. I even got phone calls asking what to do with the "animal". I had planned to do paper mache eggs but it was a HUGE glue and spray paint disaster! I then thought I could use real eggs but I didn't have enough time to eat that many so Michael's and a power drill to the rescue with already formed eggs from their Easter section.

Since there were officially three birthday honorees I didn’t want just one cake or three big ones, so I decided on three small ones. I saw something on Pinterest a while back that I used as my inspiration but wanted it to be much more "Swamp-ish". So I sent my husband off to the garage to build my vision and I contacted Edible Details. I showed her the sketch for the cake swamp centerpiece stand and she crafted the three fondant swamp creatures to use as a topper on each cake. I didn’t want the table against the wall because I wanted the guests to be able to walk around the display and see the animals (and my husband's hard work) on the ombre style cakes. Each cake sat on a wooden stump that was built into the hand crafted box filled with moss and a large plastic alligator.

I had big dreams to hang spanish moss from the ceiling. We Louisianans love our spanish moss but not in our food. I couldn't keep it from falling so after some advice on Facebook The Flair Exchange came to my aid with some wonderful muted color tissue paper I was able to make some tissue tassels to decorate our tent in the backyard.

To decorate the chandelier in the dining room I created some fringe tissue balls based off of a tutorial from Oh Happy Day. I changed it up a bit by simplifying some of the materials and it came out really well. I'll be sharing this tutorial on Pure Joy Events soon. It's really easy and can provide a great party effect with little effort.

Other food and drinks that were served included boiled crawfish and all the fixins' (of course) swamp dogs (hot dogs), pelican, crawfish and INCREDIBLE personalized Tabasco bottle cookies from Frog Prince Cake and Cookie Design, “Dirt” cups with chocolate alligators and rocks, "swamp water" and mint julep iced tea for the adults served in mason jars.

The alligator and bayou theme was carried into everything else for the party. The Purple Pug send an incredible banner complete with fun fringe and glittered gators. The wreath that greeted guests when they walked in from The Knock Knock Factory was a huge hit as well as adult favors (alligator bottle openers). The kid’s favors were homemade swamp slime in push pop containers and they had a ball playing with them. I will post a tutorial later this week. The recipe is so easy (and cheap) to make and can be dyed any color!

This new swamp collection will be in the shop soon! Thanks to all great vendors helped with products and it turned out so wonderful. Most importantly, the birthday boy had a great time and so did all our friends and family. We love you Jackson Bonham and can't wait to celebrate many more birthdays with you!