Erin Akin Carroll

Hudson has hand, foot, and mouth disease. Again. Hayes is getting tubes in the morning. Our house went on the market today. Life is busy and I’m cuddling with my boys.

But I dug way down deep in the archives for you!

In honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday, which was on March 2, I wanted to repost the details from Hudson’s first birthday party. This was originally posted in June 2010.

All photos by Wendy Woodall of A Southern Accent!

Because they have such a spacious house, my in-laws offered to let us hold the party at their house. We kind of took over and they were such good sports about letting me move things around to make room for party decorations.

We had two of these cute little orange pinwheels outside with fun green and orange ribbon tied to them. And my mom added the ribbon and the Green Eggs and Ham book to the wreath.

When guests walked in, we asked them to sign the “guest book” which was copy of Green Eggs and Ham. I wanted Hudson to have a keepsake from the big day of who was there to celebrate his first year!

In the house, immediately to the right of the front door is the dining room where we set up the dessert table. My mom is a candy buffet master and hauled all of her beautiful containers all the way from Dallas. We also had cake balls and cupcakes in addition to all of the jelly beans, M&Ms, gummy orange and lime slices, circus peanuts, lollypops, and rock candy.

We used plain white table cloths, but cut out circles in green and orange to make it more festive.

Heading into the family room, we hung an adorable banner with Hudson’s name on it.

The family room is such a large space and we needed a good way to get the green and orange in there, so I decided to rent a helium tank and buy two packs of green and orange balloons. My dad, my FIL, and I spent a large part of the morning on Saturday blowing up, tying, and attaching ribbon to the balloons.

We played the video I made for Hudson in the family room and decorated the mantle with orange flowers in green buckets. I found the paper umbrellas and paper lanterns and decided to use them to decorate the fireplace. The adorable “Happy Birthday Hudson” banner is one of my favorite things!

On the back wall of the family room, I displayed all of Hudson’s monthly pictures in green and orange buckets filled with jelly beans. The orange polka dot table runner added such a great splash of color and the “Celebrate” painting looked perfect there! (p.s. I’ll be doing a giveaway based on that “Celebrate” painting later this week!)

The main food was in the kitchen and at the breakfast table. We served hot dogs, barbecue, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, and of course, green (deviled) eggs and ham!

The party favors, in addition to the candy, were sugar cookies iced to look like a green ham!

We had a lot of fun with the drinks! In the canisters, we served Arnold Palmers or “adult lemonade” and regular lemonade in the other canister. We found cute green and white striped straws to go with the drinks.

Then in green buckets on stands, we had Jones soda in orange cream and green apple flavor. We also had bottled water (that I individually labeled), beer, and juice boxes.

At the end of the party, we passed around creamsicles and limesicles made with either orange Crush, orange sherbet, and vanilla ice cream or 7-Up, lime sherbet, and vanilla ice cream. Like a Coke float, but even better! So yummy!

my beautiful cousin with her orange creamsicle!

The party was truly a labor of love. Between TC and me, my parents, and TC’s parents, everyone worked so hard to make this a great party. We are so thankful for the love and support that Hudson has all around him.

It took a few months to get everything planned and brought together from rolling silverware at night while watching The Bachelorette and cutting out foam circles during nap time.