Abby's First Birthday

In four more days Baby Abby is going to be 2 years old. I was going to type "I can't believe it!" but yes, I can believe it. It's been an eventful two years. I've seen her grow so much during this time. In the first 12 months of her life she's gone from helpless newborn to a rambunctious baby. She learned to roll over, sit, use her hands, eat, and stand up etc. The second year she learned to walk and talk as she became her own little person. 12 though 24 months was a transition from baby to toddler. She's a toddler with SO much personality. I tell Gilbert, she's about 2ft but personality like 6'2. She has likes and dislikes. She expresses emotions with feelings in a whole new way. An infant may cry when they are cold or hungry or tired. Abby now tells us she's hungry, asks for certain foods, says no, sticks her bottom lip out when we scold her. Of course with all these new emotions comes the inability to properly act on them or express them and as a result the tantrum meltdowns. I know there will be plenty more as we enter the "terrible twos". Except now comes the satisfaction of when she asks for things she enjoys, "chocolate milk", "hold me", "kissy" and her biggest obsession "Coco". Anyone else have a Coco loving child? I love the movie too, I remember Gil and I were almost moved to tears the first time we saw it in theaters. I'm not crying, you're crying! Since then, we've seen it way too many times to count. You could mute the movie and I could tell you all the lines (and lyrics) to it...yes, its that bad. We decided early on that a Coco themed birthday was the obvious choice. I've been working all month long on decorations. Her birthday is November 1st which is easy to remember but not the most convenient. Afterall it's the day right after Halloween. I finally finished making the cupcake toppers today which was the last of the birthday decorations. yay! I can't wait to see the look on her face when she wakes up on her birthday to see all the Coco goodness.

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Let's reminisce on Baby Abby's first birthday though. I wanted to keep it non-themed aside from being pretty, classy, timeless, pink and girly. It just needed to fit that criteria. For that reason I choose to stay with a color scheme of white, light pink and gold. 

Lets start here, its her pre-outfit outfit. 

The balloon arrangement: The giant globe balloon was custom made by a lady who did them free lance-style from her home. Every aspect was customizable. I really liked the idea of the balloon being confetti filled but should have chosen white letters instead of gold. It says "Abby's 1st Birthday" but you can hardly tell. -_- 

It took time to find the right dress but I couldn't have been happier with the final choice. Even the headband matches. Both are from a boutique in McAllen called Petite Monet. Not sure if this store is state-wide or nation-wide but they carry special occasion dresses for boys and girls. They have legit and intricate Marie Antoinette style dresses, it's glorious, to say the least. They look like dresses straight from a film set. Finding matching shoes was difficult as well. I ended up making "barefoot sandals" for her out of stretchy pink ribbon from the craft store. The flowers on the sandals are from an additional headband from the same boutique. I felt a little hesitant to cut up a $16 headband but it couldn't have worked out any better. The center of the flowers originally had fake diamonds. I removed them by opening up the clasps with tweezers. Then I replaced them with fake pearls from a broken bracelet I had lying around. This way, the flowers on the sandals and the flowers on the headband she wore, both had matching pearls in their centers. I'm particular about these kind of things.

These images are raw and unedited so theres a lot of inconsistency with the quality and lighting

I picked Birdie Bistro as the location to do all this. The place fits every word I described earlier according to how I wanted Abby's birthday to be like: girly, classy, pink...The staff was super accommodating and service has always been primooo every time I've gone. The food is amazing and their sangria is delicious! One of my favorite spots in McAllen.

This is Baby Abby's third/cake smash outfit. The headband she wore [above] matches the bloomers she's wearing. For the actual cake smash we switched the headband out for a tiny birthday hat headband.

 Made a geo-filter for Snapchat. It was actually quite simple to do.

I wish I had taken more pictures of the cake :( It's a "drip cake" with French macaroons on it. Aviva also had macaroons for her first birthday and I wanted to do the same with Abby. This is the only picture I have, I'm not sure if you can tell but the cake was tilted backwards in all the cake smash pictures. It had melted in the car for the 10 minutes it was in there. CURSE YOU TEXAS HEAT!

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 I hope you enjoyed these pictures, maybe they will inspire you? :) Idunno what they would inspire you to do lol I guess maybe if you're going to have a first birthday party... Let me end with some OOTD starring Aviva, she looked equally cute for her sisters birthday.

  She randomly asked for hot chocolate and without any questions our waitress brings out this hot chocolate, now thats customer service.

TTFN

-time for dindin