Gracie's 1st birthday party!

Our sweet girl is ONE!!! My goodness, talk about a FAST YEAR! Her content little soul has just been the perfect edition to our family. We are just the luckiest!!!!!

So one very cool fact about celebrating the sweet third child of the family: we've discovered the best way to throw a party - do nothing! Bahaha! This was by far the easiest shindig we've ever thrown - got to love the third baby for showing you that there's no need for pinterest perfection (as opposed to my strives toward that idea with the older two!) as long as you've got some cool people to hang out with. I mean, what's life all about? It was by far our favorite way to celebrate a good ol' fashioned birthday: invite people over, eat some food, have fun, and that's it! Don't worry guys, we're only 7+ years into this parenting thing and we're just now figuring it all out hahaha!

Funny fact: see that table up there with the "G" on top of it? That is literally the most "decorated" the whole affair got!!! The night before I had these lofty plans to create a really cool backdrop and a table skirt to go along it all to hide the ugly coolers... but I just REALLY didn't want to make those TWO SIMPLE THINGS! It was the strangest thing but also one of the coolest - both Chad and I were like "why kill ourselves? Let's just have people over and have fun!"

So anyway, when we were setting up, I realized that maybe I should put a little something out that signified that this party was for Grace... so I went into the playroom and plucked that "G" right off the wall and placed it there - I mean!!!!!

There was a tiny voice inside my head that was making me feel a bit guilty about my over-the-top laid back ways with this party. After all, it WAS Gracie's first birthday party - a big deal!!!! But after the event has come and gone, I can say I'm glad that the scant route was the one we took (even though typing that out really does still makes me feel a bit guilty bahaha).

Speaking of the scant route... our empty room is a serious hit with people! More often than not folks will tell us to just leave it empty until Grace is like 5 years old and I have to say, I'm slowly starting to agree. It definitely won't be empty until G baby is 5, but I'm slowly morphing into a human who will probably be sad when we fill it up. Crazy!

The best party accessory: cake frosting from the big one year old's hands!!! She really didn't want anything to do with her smash cake, but hey, she got a little bit on those chubby sweet fingers of hers which transferred over to Chad and I. Got to love it!

And these pictures don't even really capture the party in all it's awesomeness! We were all having so much fun I completely forgot to grab my phone and/or the ol' DSLR until nearly the end after a few great families had already left! I'd say that's a great problem to have :)

After all was said and done with the big partay, the birthday girl (IT WAS HER ACTUAL FIRST BIRTHDAY ON PARTY DAY!!!) went and hung out on the front porch for a bit - it was such sweet time with her! We are truly the luckiest in the whole wide world!!!