"It's All Greek To Me!" First Birthday Party

Last month, I happened to be cooking some Greek food and thinking about what I wanted the theme to be for Rylee's birthday party.  It occurred to me that since Rylee only speaks baby babble right now, I could describe it as "It's all Greek to me." That turned in to having a Greek themed party! These were her party invitations.

I'm obsessed with chevron and thought the pink made it girly enough.

I'm obsessed with falafel, and even though it's not Greek food at all, it's served at a lot of Mediterranean style restaurants, so I made it anyway.

My brother sneaking food.

We had falafel with pita bread, cilantro, creamy tahini sauce, hummus, tzatziki sauce,
Greek pasta salad, chips, veggies, lemon cupcakes and cherry "pi."

My "happy birthday" banner I had Ryan do in InDesign. It matched the invitations with
the grey chevron background and pink letters.

Rylee's "1" photo collage

The present table. It had this word collage below

I asked all of our family to give me words that described Rylee, and then put it into Wordle.

We opened presents.

You can see in the background I did a photo banner of Rylee from birth-12 months old.

We sang happy birthday.

I got the recipe for this little eggless/dairy free smash cake here. I
didn't put a lot of the cream cheese frosting on it though, and used a little sugar instead
of the apple juice concentrate.

The birthday girl liked her cake.

Afterwards, she got a quick rinse in the sink.

We danced to the Zorba.

Opa!

And spent time with her aunties.

Halie was making her laugh so hard! I absolutely love this picture!

Peek-a-boo with Aunt Ally. I wanted her dressed for some family pictures.

With our one year old!

Running away to play with her toys.

It was a lovely night! Four of her aunts, two uncles, two sets of her three grandparents, two cousins, my aunt and cousins, and some family friends were all in attendance. Although Rylee only took a 40 minute nap today on the way over to my mom's, she was very well entertained and didn't have any first birthday party meltdowns. My brother-in-law brought his camera and took about 6gigs worth of pictures and video, so I have lots of pictures to go through. It is, however late, and day light savings is tomorrow, so I will call it a night and leave you with this sneak peek of the immense amount of cute pictures of Rylee!

She kept calling the toy dog "Blanca!"

And as a final note, I'm grateful for the help in preparing dips, frying up the falafel, cutting veggies, and cleaning the kitchen mess this afternoon from these three guys!

And for my brother-in-law being my personal photographer for the evening. It was great to not worry about taking pictures and to enjoy the moments tonight.

My mother-in-law helped me bake cupcakes, made a delicious pie, and cleaned up after me as I destroyed her kitchen. 

My mom of course, for hosting the party at their house, even though she wasn't feeling real well, and cleaning before and after. 

And my sisters. Cassie ran after Rylee all afternoon while I was busy in the kitchen. Alex came early and decorated, taught us to dance to the Zorba, kept Rylee occupied frequently, made a yummy Greek pasta salad, helped clean up and pack everything into the car to go back to my in-laws.

I have one pretty awesome family!