Emerald + Aubergine: Rylen's Turning One! Planning a 1st Birthday Party...

I started planning our son's first birthday party, (WHAT?!?!? a year already?) and I have realized that this "thing", this elusive 1st Birthday thing is more about the parent(s) or let's be honest, more about me the mother, than anything else... As one of my mommy friends put it,

"it's a celebration of making it through the first year of your first child's life without killing your spouse."

I could not have put it better.

I have two more months to go until the big day, but seriously, there have been moments when I wanted to kill the husband because we were not on the same page with this crazy parenting experience... many, many (many many many) times. I'm "older" and the husband and I felt we were totally ready to change our lives and start a family. We were mature enough to put our lives as we knew it aside and to do the parenting thing. We were going to be awesome parents. We as people would not change... we would simply add a new special someone into our lives to make our family complete.

Phfffff! What the hell did we know? Let me tell you,

We knew NOTHING.

We did not know that not only would our lives change, but our relationship towards each other as husband and wife would change. We did not know that such a little person could and would rock our worlds and that life would never, ever be the same. And our kid isn't even that difficult!
It's April, and we have pretty much almost made it through our 1st year and our little Rylen is:
a.) alive and well and b.) we are alive and well.
We are so blessed with a genuinely happy and healthy child and we could not be more enthusiastic to watch him grow every day despite all the challenges that a new baby brings to family life.

So, back to the birthday planning...
I kept trying to think of themes that would be cute, but something Rylen would not necessarily ask for when he actually knows and cares what his birthday is all about. (And when it is actually about him and not us parents...) That knocked out all the usual boy themes. Pirates, Super Heros, Fire Trucks, and Dinosaurs, etc. I spent a week thinking I would be super cheesy and do a 'Construction Site' theme - seeing that everything we would need for props and decorations is in our garage... but it was just not nostalgic enough for me. And let's face it, I'm planning this party for myself as much as for the Ry-Guy and I am the design side, not the construction side.
I finally settled on vintage airplanes because the husband loves planes and thanks to Pinterest (LOOOOOVE me some Pinterest!) I think that I have all the inspiration I need to throw Rylen's 1st Birthday in style.

When all is said and done, I will post some pics of course! But until then, here are some inspiration images... Gosh darn people are sooo creative!!!
(All images taken from Pinterest: search - Airplane parties)