Sarah's 1st Birthday Party {a barn dance}

If you would have ever told me that I would be desiring a country themed anything in my life even just a few years ago, I would have just laughed.  I am just not a country girl at heart, but I have definitely learned to really enjoy some country things and even some country music (shhhhh don't tell anyone)

So as I started to think of ideas for Sarah's first birthday, one of the first thing that came to my mind was her Grandma Fran, who passed away on her birthday and her love for horses, and how she just would have loved if Sarah's birthday were in her barn.  The thought of this made me a bit sad, sad that Fran just couldn't be at her party, but also because I couldn't have her birthday in her barn because I know Fran would have just oogled over it!  At the same time I thought how honoring it would be to celebrate Sarah's birthday doing something that really honored and remembered Fran.

One of Fran's good friends actually stepped in, she offered her barn!  Loved it! 

So off I went with the barn theme.  We do first birthday parties big, like a big, friends and family event, that is lots of fun!  That was actually the main thing I wanted, I wanted other families to come and really just have fun and enjoy themselves!  I didn't have a ton of money to throw around though, so feeding 40 people and decorating on a budget wasn't easy.

Thankfully, I have a husband who builds and recycles!  We used lots of trash and recycled good to make many of the decorations, it saved lots of money and was pretty easy to do since it was a barn

theme

Brett, build the apple crates out of scrap palet wood
we served: beef, chicken & vegetarian chili (seriously a really cheap way to feed lots of people!)

I used recycled tin cans and spray painted them white (upper right photo)
lots of barn themed snacks from amazon.com and costco

Brett made the bean bag apple game
For drinks we had: apple juice boxes, rootbeer, and an apple cider punch
The favors were bandanas filled with treats

I made "caramel apple cupcakes" from this site
I used recycled cardboard for the signs

I made chalk board signs with small pieces of pre-cut wood from hobby lobby and then a little chalkboard paint
the silver buckets with the chalkboard paint were from the dollar spot at Target

Brett actually made this sign for Maya's 1st birthday and then I repainted it for Sarah's party

Cake Time

sfs

time For Presents

Maya & Norah basically opened everything

Sarah actually didn't care about opening her presents at all, she just wanted to eat her corn

  and of course there was lots of dancing!

"where did you come from, where did you go? cotton eyed joe"

"stuck like glue, you and me baby we're stuck like glue"

"Yee Haw"

one of my favorite mama's, Celine

My Douala for Sarah's delivery, Kari

It was such a fun and special day with lots of memories and family fun

She was delightful, and loved every minute of it