Good morning, crafty friends! Can anyone tell me where this week has gone!? With the long Memorial Day weekend and this being the last week of school, my life is flying by at warp speed. I feel like I’m at the stage in life where I will look back later and say, “I blinked and then she graduated!”. In the midst of celebrating the end of preschool for Charlee and Kindergarten for Madi, Henry turned 1! We took some time to celebrate our sweet little man at a pirate-themed party over the weekend. There’s almost nothing I enjoy more than planning a party (maybe shopping!?) and I’ve been excited to share all the little handmade details and decorations with you!

The invitation kicks off the party so let’s start there! We released a collection of pirate products in April and ever since I saw these illustrations by Danielle Lounds, I knew I wanted to do a pirate-themed party for Henry. Here’s a look at the invitation that I designed using the Treasure Map Background and Puzzled Cutting Plate. The Puzzled Cutting Plate is one of our new Mixed Media dies which means it has a deeper cut line to get through thicker materials. I stamped and colored this on our Cut & Color Me Chipboard for more stability than cardstock.

I put the puzzle pieces in a cute little kraft colored envelope with shimmery glitter polka dots. The envelopes were easier to mail than the boxes that I originally designed to hold the pieces for my release project.

When our party guests arrived, their first stop was the Tattoo Parlor and pirate dressing room. I loved seeing everyone decked out in bandanas, eye patches, gold earrings, mustaches and more!

After everyone was appropriately dressed, it was time for lunch! On the menu for the party: Cannonballs (meatball slider sandwiches), Seashell Pasta, Berry’d Treasure (in a watermelon pirate boat!), Fish & Chips (goldfish crackers & potato chips), and Caribbean Sea Punch.

After lunch, it was time for games and entertainment! It was SO hot on Memorial Day that we decided to beat the heat and move the party indoors. I painted a large pallet and added the plastic hooks to create the Hook Toss game. I found the open shark mouth at Hobby Lobby and decided it would be perfect for a little game to see who could toss the most Swedish Fish into the shark’s mouth (check out the hilarious ‘after’ photo of the shark…someone made sure he got plenty to eat!). Then we finished off the afternoon with a balloon twister who made swords and scabbards (and tons of other stuff) for all the kids!

It wouldn’t be a party without sweet treats so we decided to dig in after the balloon twister was finished. The cake was made by a local bakery (although I’d like to take credit myself!). The top tier was Snickers flavor and the bottom was Almond. I say “was” because it’s completely GONE and it was delicious!

The amazing cookies were made by The Sugar Jar! Fun fact: The Sugar Jar is owned by former TE design team member, Ana Wohlfahrt! I shared the stamp illustrations with her and she recreated the drawings in the form of cookies! She is such a talented artist and it’s been so fun to see her business grow and flourish!

At the end of the party, everyone left with a loot bag filled with gold-wrapped candies (Rolos and Twix bars). I found this idea on Pinterest and it was super quick to re-create. The burlap sacks came from Amazon and I hot glued a red X cut from our red glitter felt onto each bag and added hand-drawn trail marks with Sharpie.

Thanks so much for taking a look at the celebration of our little man! He had so much fun at his party and was appropriately exhausted by the end of it…and so was I! I’m going to leave you with a few pictures from his one-year photo session and cake smash. He may not look too excited by the cake, but by the end of the session, he had his whole face stuck in it!