Our honey bee Nova turned one, and there was cake.

Our sweet baby girl is ONE! Ok, she’s a little over one now since her birthday (and party) were a few months (wow) back. It’s just taken me some time to get everything together for this post. But the wait was worth it, amiright?

We celebrated our sweet honey bee, Nova, with a classy little shindig at home with family and friends. Nothing over the top or expensive, just a casual opportunity to eat food and marvel at how a year has flown by so crazy fast.

It seems like just yesterday I was on maternity leave, a teeny baby girl snuggled up on my chest while I binge-watched allllll the Netflix. It was a tough, beautiful time, and I desperately wish we could go back. Yet it’s the most amazing thing seeing Nova turn into an actual little person. Like she knows things, y’all! Well at least the important things, you know, like snacks… She definitely knows snacks. But I digress.

To be honest, I wasn’t even sure we were going to have a party. We’d all been sick pretty much nonstop since before Thanksgiving, and Christmas felt like a big undertaking financial (first holiday with two kids…whoa). So I was just going to skip it…she wouldn’t notice, right? But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t imagine not writing a party into her baby book, or tell her how we threw her brother a cool Star Wars party and not have an answer when she asked what kind of party she got.

So it started with Pinterest, of course. A long time ago, pre-Nova, I created a secret board title “Future Baby Girl.” And I would save all kinds of things to it - photos of teeny tiny ballerinas, ruffled baby onesies, articles about overcoming fertility challenges and even birthday party ideas for this daughter I didn’t know and wasn’t even sure I’d ever have. And the one I remember the most was this classy bumble bee themed party, so in a moment of decisiveness, I said let’s do it and ordered an invite on Etsy.

Then I bought a dress, and a crowd-sourced a local cake maker from my neighborhood facebook group. And she recommended a cookie maker. Then I Pinterested some more and ordered balloon arch materials from Amazon. And honeycomb napkins on Etsy. And a handmade highchair banner. And all the little details just began to come together.

I quickly realized that although I was buying all these things, what I really needed to pull this off was time. I had drill with my National Guard unit for four days the weekend prior to the party, so I ended up taking a day off of work to put everything together (and I mean a full day). I blew up balloons, I taped wildflower seed tags to the tops of the little jars of local honey I gave away as favors. I thew together the honeycomb snack mix and planned out space for giant food trays from Publix.

And then it was party day. In true new toddler fashion, Nova decided she was NOT going to take her second nap that day (which was perfectly planned to fall right before her party so she wouldn’t be cranky at all). But even so, she was a gem. She had friends from “school” come, so they just ran around with all her toys just having so much fun. The adults chatted and ate food and took turns pushing the kids in the hot pink car that was in heavy rotation with the under two crowd. I took pictures, but not too many because I tried to really enjoy the party. Nova ate cake, but just like Nash, didn’t quite meet our idea of “smash cake” with full gusto.

She was such a little vision in her little party dress…it was everything I had imagined my daughter’s first birthday would be. And I’m so glad that despite the chaos of our lives and the various expenses needed to pull this off, Nova will have this amazing party to look back on (in pictures, of course). All in all, it was a really great way to say we love you to our Baby Sweets!