Ella's 1st Birthday!

I can hardly believe Ella is ONE! 

Last year we brought home a tiny beautiful baby girl, and now we have tiny beautiful toddler! 

Ella is calm and super sweet. 

I chose "Sweet Treats" has her birthday theme because she truly is a sweet treat in our life and it fit her personality perfectly.

I spent friday afternoon baking and cleaning the house and that night I picked up "gah" from the airport.  We had a movie night and I began decorating her birthday cake. Saturday morning we woke up and decorated! Around lunch time, we celebrated her birthday!! 

The cake turned out pretty good. I tried my hand at creating a cake completely with icing- no fondant this time around. And did I mention her dress? I had a hard time finding a dress that I liked-- I did have a bright polka dot dress in size 3 though. SO- I severely altered it from a size 3 to 12 months! I think it worked out great and most of all she loved it! She even told me so: 

(The video is blurry- sorry about that, but turn the volume up if you're curious about what she thought)

We decided to open gifts first because we figured she'd get her party dress all dirty with cake. It took her a little while to figure out how to open her gifts and what we were telling her to do-- but she had lots of help figuring it out! 

One my favorite things was seeing all the kids excited to celebrate and play with her. 

She loved all the attention. 

After presents, we sang Happy Birthday and cut the cake! 

The giant cupcake was bigger than her!