First birthday cake

[BabyH]

Here are pics from this weekend. Sorry for the creepy blurry face pictures. We only had about 17 people over, but in the chaos I totally forgot to give DS his cupcake on the day of the party! haha. So we gave it to him this morning.

You're so creative! I LOVE that banner - care to share directions! And great idea with putting his 12 months of pics on your mantle. I might copy your entire party....

[Pinky]

Love the pictures! We are about to celebrate a first birthday as well... where did you get those cute white frames?

ETA: just saw the link.

[TxCat]

DS's first party is this weekend. I'll post pictures when we're done. I've ordered cupcakes from a local cupcake lady (http://www.gingerlilybakery.com/). I made some homemade cupcake toppers (the ones that look like a lollipop) that I will stick into the cupcakes. Half of them will be a picture of DS's face, the other half will be the number "1".

We are getting the killer coconut and hummingbird cupcakes. Not exactly "healthy", but not bad either.

ETA: as for decorations, I am keeping it really simple and easy - but all of my inspiration is from odeedoh.com.
I got 12 of these for above the mantel for months 0-11: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/30151035. I also used a large circle shaped puncher and made a garland with colorful cirlces to hang around the mantel and around the house. I am in the process of making a "DS's 1st Birthday" banner too - just used ms Word to type out the giant letters to use as a template for my colored cardstock. Oh also I'm making a onesie with the number "1" on it.

For party food, we are just grilling up hamburgers. We have family dropping by at all hours of the day, so it's easiest to just throw a patty on the grill as they arrive.

LOVE the pictures - what a great job! I may have to steal some of these ideas for later this year...

[joules]

Thanks for the complements! However, none of these ideas were from me - I got just about everything from odeedoh.

The banner came about because I failed to do this elaborate painted backdrop thing. But this was so much easier and I love how it came out. I just used PowerPoint and used the "Insert Word Art" tool. I picked the very first style option. I tried to get all fancy with the font, but found "Arial Black" to look the best and seemed easiest to cut out. I typed in about 2-3 letters each time. Then right-click on the letters and select "Format WordArt". For the size, I checked "lock aspect ratio" and then made the height of each letter almost 6 inches. After printing out on regular white paper, I would roughly cut each letter out and lightly tape to a piece of scrapbooking cardstock. Then cut out the letter along the lines. The ribbon I used to string it up is the thinnest cheapest one available at Michael's (50 cents). To affix the letters to the ribbon, I just used regular scotch tape along the back. I used painters blue tape to tape the whole banner to the wall. I figured this would leave the least amount of sticky-ness behind. But since I hung this up a few days before the party, I found that the banner would slip slightly each day - the blue tape didn't grip that thin ribbon that well. I just re-taped it right before the party and it was fine. To hide the blue tape, I cut out some circular pieces of cardstock and stuck it on top of the tape.

The letters themselves are actually quite flimsy b/c of the cardstock. But they are fine when they are hanging against the wall. If I were to make this again to hang freely somewhere I might get thicker cardstock or add an extra step by gluing each letter to a piece of cardboard and then cutting it out again.

I can't take any credit for the IKEA frame idea on the mantel. I saw this idea on odeedoh a few months back. The pictures took a bit of planning since the frames are for portrait oriented pictures. And I hardly ever take pictures in that format - all my pictures are landscape oriented. So ever since I saw the idea, I tried to take a few portrait oriented pictures each month. I printed the pictures out on Costco's online photo center. You can actually crop landscape photos to make them portrait formatted. I had to do this for a few of them.

[joules]

Thank you for the complements, if you look closely you'll see the small defects, specially on the edges

This was my second cake, my first ever was a trial run. But I really enjoyed it, everyone who attended couldn't believe I made it as they all know I'm no cook/baker. My mom does all the cooking in our house. But I really wanted to do it for DD. It also made me realise that I love baking, something I hadn't realised before.

Wow!! Sorry I didn't notice this before - I couldn't see the picture from my computer at work. WOW!!! This is amazing!! Great job!!

[wendibird22]

For DD1 we did a 3D duck cake (wilton pan) that sat on top of a small round cake. For DD2 we did cupcakes with a cupcake theme for the party. Both were just standard cake recipes (nothing healthy about it!). And neither girl would eat their cake. In fact both cried the minute their hand touched the icing. So, IMO, I'd make a cake that the adults want to eat LOL!

[BDKmom]

We did the whole "smash cake" thing for my son last month and he loved it! Our grocery store offered a free smash cake if you bought a regular cake decorated with happy 1st birthday. We put it on his high chair tray and he just mostly swished the icing around with his hands. He ate some of the icing and a little of the cake. I didn't worry about being super healthy, because he had never had sugary stuff before and he didn't really end up eating very much of it. But the pics were great and he really seemed to have fun. The family definitely had a blast watching him "dig in!"