We celebrated Reese’s first birthday a couple of weeks ago on a snowy Saturday afternoon with friends and family at our house. It was the first birthday party I have ever thrown (not counting one for Andrew that was at a bar) and I had high expectations for myself. Pinterest will do that to you.

I’m neither crafty nor culinary, which I am just going to have to accept and move on, but I did the best that I could. We kept it as simple as possible with pizzas, mac and cheese, meatballs, rice and apps. My sister and I made chocolate and red velvet cupcakes with raspberries and mint leaves for dessert. We used a Duncan Hines box mix after I tried (and failed) to make cupcakes from scratch a couple of days earlier (they turned out chewy and bland and I couldn’t even fool Reese into eating them.)

Decorations were also simple due to my uncraftiness. I made a few paper chains out of printed paper from Michael’s, hung huge paper flowers (Martha Stewart, from AC Moore), some sparkly garland (also Martha Stewart from AC Moore), put out some flowers from Trader Joe’s and some pictures of Reese and called it a day.

Luckily, this was Reese’s first birthday party ever, so she didn’t have much to compare it to, but I know that her day was full of potato chips, naps, hugs, and chocolate cupcakes. What more can a girl ask for?