in 12... and in 7

In 12 days my Precious One will be one year old. I can't believe it. Sometimes if I think about it too much, I just want to hold him and cry. Where did the time go? He's a toddler now, and life is great in toddler-land, but it means he isn't a baby anymore. I know, I know. He'll always be my baby and all that jazz, but it's both fun and a little weepy to watch him grow up so fast.

And in 7 days we're having his birthday party. Here. At our teeny-tiny lily pad of a house where we'll all be sitting on top of each other and parking in neighbors' parking spots. Oh well. He only turns one once, right?

I've been stressing out a bit about the party details, even though it won't be a big deal of a party. Parties always make me nervous. So many things to worry about, and what if no one comes? What if they come but they aren't entertained? I looked a long time for a theme, but nothing seemed right. So I decided to find some invitation inspiration and go with that, so here's our non-theme... blue and green and orange pennant flags, inspired by this invitation I made (but the general flag idea I jacked from tinyprints.com):

I've been sewing pennant flags to use as decoration and my goodness, am I sick of the project. I love them though. It isn't a really difficult project, just a little tedious and heaven knows I don't have a lot of time I can do it when Eli isn't trying to stick his sweet little almost-one-year-old fingers under my moving needle. I have to finish the rest this weekend... so I hope the hubs doesn't think he gets to nap all day.

I wanted to make him a birthday crown like one I saw on etsy, so I went to it. Well, I'm not good at guessing dimensions, because it's huge. It's adjustable around his head, but it's just sort of giant in general. I wanted to make it big enough that he could wear it for subsequent birthdays (hence the E instead of a 1) but he might be wearing this until he's well into adulthood. Oh well. I'm not starting over, because my fingers were practically bleeding from all the hand stitching, and besides, he won't leave it on anyway. So why double my wasted time?

Action shots in seven days!