Charlie’s 1st birthday: A {retro} day at the beach!

I showed you here, Charlie’s 1st birthday invite and a hint of what was to come.  We celebrated my baby’s party on the weekend with about 40 friends and family and had a great time. 

Of course I left everything until the last minute (which is why there have been no blog posts in the last 1.5 weeks!) but I got nearly everything I wanted to achieve.  Are you ready for a picture overload?

The sweet table original plan was to have 3D beach boxes as a background (like Brighton Beach) but I couldn’t achieve the look I was after, so ended up just going plain!I made the cake and Mum iced it.I looove these gorgeous glass containers, filled with blue heaven jelly with their personalised spoon.I based the food labels on the surf life saving flags.The lollipops were a hit with the kids and for something a bit different I propped them up in some thongs (flip flops).You can’t have a beach party without tacky cocktail umbrellas!Pearls:  AKA kool mints in oyster shells on brown sugar sand!Marshmallow ice-creamsA cute little print I made up for the tableI suppose I did need to do something healthy on the table and the fruit cups were it!The savoury table (side note:  I love my kitchen and it’s beautiful big bench….about 1.8m square).Thank god for pintrest!  I found the 2 below ideas on there…..the first is simply a baguette scooped out and filled with dip.  The other is fetta, tomato and basil drizzled in balsamic vinegar (I don’t eat tomato, but apparently they were delish!).It’s all in the details and I know no-one noticed, but the ice in the champers bucket was fish shaped!Glass labels.Personalised Charlie cups (yes, I told you I went overboard!)I decided to make a few signs to great out guests.  Ignore the fact that we still don’t have a front yard!I found this beach scene and knew it would go perfectly along our fence to add to the tropical theme!And you can’t go to the beach and not know the surf report!How cute is this sign?A few beautiful leaves for our coffee table in our Alfresco.And on our kitchen table, I simply filled our hurricane vases with shells.These 3 amazing women saved the day!  I couldn’t of finished of everything without the help of my beautiful Mum, my Grandma and my cousin Sarah.  They prepped the food, mopped, occupied the kids while I finished things, cut, sewed etc. etc. etc.!And here is the birthday boy with my Mum.  Don’t you love his singlet?  It’s from Rock Your Baby and co-incidentally, Hugh also wore a ‘Hanging with your Gnomies’ t-shirt for his birthday.  I hope whatever our #3 baby’s party theme is, they have one to match as well (not that #3 is on the horizon yet!).

And here’s the back of the singlet.Cake time!  Look at those gorgeous baby blues!A quick 3/4 family shot (Hugh was still asleep).Ahh now he’s awake!

Did you notice his t-shirt?  Yep, Lifesaver on duty!And finally my bff’s!

It wasn’t as retro as I wanted originally, but I did love it all in the end and we had a ball!