A "ONE-Deer-ful" Birthday - Our Baby Turns One!

Over the weekend, we celebrated our "deer one", baby Caris, who just turned ONE! (And I might have cried a little...)
As some of you know, she is our rainbow baby after four losses, and her name, meaning "Grace", was given to my husband when he was praying early on that God would let us keep this baby. Baby Caris has brought us all so much joy with her fun personality, her giggles and her "fake laughs" and "coughs" (whenever she tries to copy us!). She has a fierce love for squirrels and squeals with delight at the sight of one. She also loves her stuffed animal, a doggie that wears a rainbow bear suit. I thank God for you every single day, my sweet little Caris, for coming into our lives. 

To celebrate this big milestone for Caris and us, I wanted to do something simple and sweet to remember this by, especially as we couldn't invite our extended family and friends during this pandemic. My in-laws, whom we hadn't seen in over 10 months, did decide to make the trek up from southern California to be here with us. It was a very special treat especially for our older daughter June, who really missed being with them. 

Even before Caris was born, I had always wanted to do a Woodlands themed birthday party for Caris. I thought it would be so cute to have little mushrooms, a few woodland creatures to deck her party with...but when I finally started planning, I fell in love with a much simpler, more elegant, deer-themed birthday idea I found on Pinterest. I love the play on words "One-deer-ful", even though it can take a minute to understand. 

Big sister June and I made the wooden sign with a piece of hickory leftover from our renovation last year, and it was perfect. I found some digital stencils, typed in "one deer ful" and printed them out, then blew the words up to fit the piece of wood I had. Then, June and I cut and traced the letters with pencil, and painted the outlines in with white acrylic paint. The nice thing about painting on wood and doing this type of "hand-written" lettering is you don't have to worry about being perfect. Imperfection adds character. 

Misty, the owner at @heartfeltblooms, gifted us with the most darling set of deer ear headbands for the girls, and a gorgeous felt garland that was originally meant to decorate the high chair with for the cake smash, but we felt (pun intended ha) it worked perfectly above our handmade sign instead!

My sweet friend Vanessa @vanessastyled made Caris' cakes (a smaller one for her cake smash that's dairy free), and also doubled as our photographer (yes, she is a momma with many talents!). She made plain white cakes that we then had fun putting finishing touches on. I loved how Misty's felt flowers had similar colors to the fresh blush roses, white hydrangea, and eucalyptus that I purchased. The rest of the fresh flowers we put in little mason jars.

Did Caris like her cake? Well...she actually did not go for the delicious cake! We lured her with little rice puffs placed onto the cake, and she picked those out and ate them instead. I guess she had "frosted puffs"! And I imagine those are tasty!

If you look closely you can see the little rice puff in her mouth ;) 

I also got to sneak in some photos with the girls...notice Caris has mommy's lipstick on her right cheek in the photo below, on right.

By the way, in case you're wondering, the girls are wearing my new design, the "Antique Lace dresses" that I designed over a year ago when I was still pregnant with Caris. But due to the pandemic we did not launch this collection this past Spring. So these will be debuting in Spring 2021 along with a women's dress (that I am not modeling here)! I hadn't planned on using these for Caris' "One-deer-ful" birthday celebration, but I thought they actually worked out beautifully with the colors! 

And of course, daddy and daughter moments always melt my heart <3 I love how much they adore him and he lights up the room for them. 

And that's all the baby birthday party spam for now...so so thankful that we have been able to have baby Caris in our lives for a full year now...and we look forward to many, many more (just don't grow up too fast!). We are so proud of you, baby girl!

xoxo, Mommy, Daddy, and your Big Sis