We celebrated our Daughter's first birthday this past Saturday at my folks house! It was a lovely day and the perfect excuse to get my big family together to honor/ overwhelm our little one year old. With this birthday we started some fun handmade birthday traditions, and I thought I would share some of my favorite pictures along with a few DIY projects I worked on for her party.
Above: I bought a bunch of small white pumpkins for the party, including two larger ones. I figured they would be great for the big day as well as for thanksgiving! I painted a profile silhouette of our daughter on one of the bigger ones and then the word "one" with her birthdate "10-27" beneath- on the smaller one.
The setting: Flowers from the husbo given to us on her actual birthday, the white velvet cake with raspberry butter cream that my husband made the day before the party, and my cousin and I cut and hung streamers to act as a back drop for the handmade felt Happy Birthday banner I bought on etsy.
Since the cake was filled with layers of Raspberry buttercream, we decided to decorate it with a Raspberry number 1, and then above it we placed a single white candle.
My parent's dining room. I hung the felt garland, that came with the happy birthday garland, from the chandelier and then put a small vase of the flowers on the table with a few of the white pumpkins. My mom has this bright and festive purple table cloth with birds and foliage - it was perfect for the party.
This might be one of my favorite pictures- I love how she is looking a bit overwhelmed as people are a blur around her, pretty much sums up being a toddler.
(NOTE: a baby will try and reach for the candle!)
Her Crown: I wanted something that she could wear every year. I think it will be cute to see her in it year after year- as a little marker of her growing up! The crown is made out of cardboard and covered with some felt we had lying around. The flowers are these great felt "stickers" from Michaels (where I also got the glittery ric rac ribbon). I was pretty pumped about finding these stickers, because it was one less thing I would have to make! I hand embroidered "Happy Birthday" in silver yarn on a little felted banner and then glued it to the front of the hat. The crown has a band of elastic on the back allowing it to grow along with her!
Here she is helping herself to her raspberries, too funny.
The raspberry buttercream layers of the cake.
A little word about the cake, I emailed a friend from college who loves baking and asked her if she had a good white cake recipe that we could mix some raspberry layers into it and she sent me this White Velvet Cake recipe. The husbo and I decided to "test" out the recipe the weekend before the party. We always talk about trying out recipes before serving them to others, and this time we actually followed through with this hosting strategy! It was delicious and we were glad we did, we learned we should use seedless raspberry jam, and to cook it for less time. It's a great cake, very sweet and tasty- thanks Meghan!
After Cake- the little miss opened her lovely gifts.
Here she is banging away on her new piano!
It was a fun day spent with family and marveling at where this year went! (more motherhood thoughts on that later!) One final note about the party, it might look like the prep was time intensive, but the silhouette pumpkin I painted the weekend before and it only took me 20 mins to cut and trace the picture and then fill it in. The crown I worked on through out the week- with 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there, gluing little pieces on when I could. Then the streamers we cut the night before.
The handmade birthday traditions we will continue are- the handmade crown and using the felt garlands every year! And who knows maybe there will be a silhouette pumpkin every year as well!?
