The Balzer 5: you are my sunshine

My baby is 1 today.

We celebrated this past weekend.

I've known for a super long time that I wanted to do a "You Are My Sunshine" party, because this is the song we've sang to him since we brought him home from the hospital. I sang this song to the other kids some, along with many others, when I'd put them to bed. But for some reason with Gavin, this song just stuck with all of us. Even the kids picked up on it quick and joined in every time they caught me singing it to him.

And thanks to the good ole' world wide web, wouldn't ya know there were so many cute ideas for it!

It was even more fun when I found out that my sister was planning the same theme for her little girl in February. So we shared ideas, and she even made a few things for me and shipped them to me for the party. Unfortuneately, the holiday shipping schedule messed things up and the box got here on Monday, a day too late for the party. Such a bummer.

On the bright side, Gavin now has a cute cute sign for his room!

I attempted cake balls for the first time, and it didn't go very well. I figured out that there's a small learning curve, so maybe next time will be better. They were going to have cute sun details on them, but I scratched that at the last minute.

I ordered the cookies. I'd like to tackle decorated sugar cookies like this sometime, but not this time.

And I threw together a small cake for Gavin to dig into.

The framed signs were a free printable and the yellow chevron fabric I used for the tablecloth has been sitting by my sewing machine for a year, waiting to be turned into more curtains to finish up Gavin's room. And because the cute fabric bunting that my sister made didn't get here in time, I threw together a paper one the night before.

Gavin wore the same #1 shirt that Mason wore on his first birthday.

I love our "Happy Birthday" banner from Heather at CMhandmade! It works for every birthday and every theme.

I made a first year video for Mason's first birthday so I did one for Gavin too. I originally did them because I didn't do a scrapbook for either of them like I did for Taylor's first year. But I love the videos so much that I want to go back and make Taylor one also. It's so fun putting pictures to songs and I found the best songs for Gavin's video - "You Are My Sunshine" (of course), "We Belong Together" from Toy Story, "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles and a few more. It was a long video, but I could watch it over and over again.

He was a pretty serious guy all night.

I haven't always done party favors at my kids' parties. If I can't think of something that fits well, then I've skipped them before. I'm kind of inconsistent like that. Sometimes we do invitations, sometimes not. Sometimes the invitations get out weeks in advance, some day 2 days in advance. Sometimes we invite friends and family both, sometimes just family. I really have no pattern for the way we do things.

I was very close to skipping the party favors this time, because other than wrapping up the sugar cookies and giving those as a "thank you", I really had no other ideas.

Until one night I was starting to plan out our December "random acts of kindness" activities. We've never really done an advent calendar here before, or any planned December activities. But I've had some plans in works for this year. I pinned this "random acts of kindess" idea awhile back, and as I searched around more, I ran across the "Light 'em Up" Project and loved it! I started incorporating "light 'em up" with the "sunshine" theme and decided that we'd ask our friends and family at the party to spread the "SONshine" this Christmas season.

Plus the printable notes and candy cane tags made it super easy!

The Light 'em Up project has a humongous list of ideas for things to do, and a planning sheet to help you plan out the specifics for your family.

So I made up little "SonShine" packets that included 5 days worth of "light 'em up" tasks such as...

*take quarters to a vending machine and leave a little note

*leave a dollar bill tucked away in the toy section of the Dollar Store with a little note

*ask your checkout cashier at the store what his/her favorite candy is and add that to your items and hand it to them with a little note"

*leave a note and treat in a public restroom for the person who cleans it

Each envelope in the packet had a label on the outside that explained the task. And on the inside, they could find the corresponding note for that task.

In addition to the tasks, we included a box of candy canes to leave around for treats and a roll of washi tape to tape the notes and treats to things.

I connected it all together (besides the box of candy canes) with a metal ring, so it could easily be kept in the car or a purse and easy to take along when they're out and about.

I had so much fun with this theme - maybe one of my favorites so far! It was super easy and it was perfect for our little guy.

Today we didn't do much out of the ordinary, except sing "Happy Birthday" at breakfast, lunch and dinner, and give our sweet boy lots of extra kisses and snuggles.

Oh, and a little photoshoot, in which I actually got some smiles...