Lou's First Birthday

My oh my... how time flies. This whole month has brought on a lot of reflection.

I'm so grateful that we have so many photos and videos of those hours leading up to her arrival and the month following. That time was such a blur of visits, love, gifts, sleepless nights, huge learning curves, moving house (when she was 3 weeks old!) and... painkillers. Sweet, sweet prescription painkillers.

For her first party I decided to invite all of my closest friends. Most of them are without children (other than Hera who is now 6 months old) so our guests were 90% over the age of 25. When she is older I'll let her take care of the guest list, but for this event I wanted it small, intimate and as stress-free as possible. Also, pretty. I wanted it to be very pretty. I admit that was more for me than it was for her. But I did all the work getting her into this world!

The general theme was ballet - in colour scheme and for the 2 babies (and 1 adult), in costume. I spoiled her (me) with a purchase from Tutu du Monde. It shipped remarkably fast from Australia to Canada and was everything she (I) had dreamed of.... 

My friend Maya of Roam Travel PR generously offered to cater while another dear friend, Paige Owen, took photos.

A series of professional photoshoots have been really important to me over the past year as I've been planning a follow up to our Layflat wedding book (titled Volume I - though after 5 years together before we were married, I'd say it was officially more like Volume V or Volume XX). As with cards and phonebooks in the past, my intention is to do a "Volume II" for Louella's first 2 years of life, and then follow up with a "Volume III" for our next baby, with Artifact Uprising again.