A Sweet Celebration--Tessa's 1st birthday party

We had a cupcake-themed birthday party for my baby girl on Saturday. Here are the details as promised.

INVITATION:

I have been trying to do most of my designing digitally lately, but then add an element by hand that gives more of a handmade feel. This entire invitation is digital, except for the cupcake liner (made from a coffee filter) that I loosely attached with scotch tape so that it could be "peeled" to reveal the party details inside. The writing is a little hard to read the way it came out at the printers. It says: "Our SWEET Tessa is turning...1, come help us celebrate! It will be fun!"

CREDITS: Photo-Natalie Crisp, font: Tuna with Rye, Paper: Misty Mareda, Cupcake elements (recolored, reworked) and alpha: Leora Sanford, Letter T: frame: Kelly Mickus

CAKE (or rather, cupcakes):

I had been planning to do a cup-cake theme for a while, so when my mother-in-law told me she was thinking about getting the giant cupcake pan and the smaller set, too, I told her that I would be willing to help justify that purchase by borrowing them for this party (I'm really thoughtful that way. :-))

So the idea was to have all kinds of cupcakes from big to small. The hit of the party were these cupcake pops, that we have all seen from Bakerella.

Would you believe that most of my party guests had never heard of Bakerella?!? I think they were just thinking that I was really clever. Come to think of it, I think her cupcake pops were the reason I started thinking of a cupcake-themed birthday to begin with.

I used sticks, candy melts, and sprinkles from my MIL's stash (thank you!) and topped the pops with either a red skittle or these strawberry whoppers I found at the grocery store. The pops were the first thing to disappear at the party. Everyone really liked them.

And what 1-year-old wouldn't like their very own giant cupcake to eat? Actually, she was pretty delicate with the cake--mainly picking off the sprinkles, and so we were able to preserve most of it for us to eat later.

Just so you aren't too impressed, every cake was made using cake mixes (I am crazy, but not completely sadistic). I spruced up a white cake mix with orange extract for regular-sized cupcakes, and that was pretty yummy. Other flavors included strawberry for the big cake, cherry chip for the large cupcake, chocolate for the cupcake pops, and confetti with colorful sprinkles for the cakewalk cupcakes. The cupcake tray, some of the liners, flags, confetti, plates and napkins, are all from the Martha Stewart party line found at Walmart.

FOOD:

There wasn't any besides cupcakes...at least, not anything that wouldn't give you cavities. I generally like some healthy options at a party, but they just didn't go with the theme, so what could I do?

I planned the party for 2:00, so hopefully everyone had a good lunch before they came and would be able to handle the sugar rush! I did have punch--the old sherbet and lemon-lime trick. It was foamy and frothy and orange (which is important!). I also had jars with color coordinated candy--strawberry whoppers, red and orange skittles, and caramel apple candy corns, which are a light red color. (OK. So I pulled out some nuts part way through the party when guests needed something not sweet).

I was inspired by the Amy Atlas Tables and wanted a similar feel at our display.

DECORATIONS AND DISPLAYS:

I made this bouquet of paper flowers from coffee filters and inked the edges. I was going to make long garlands of these to hang from the banister and behind the dessert table, but I ran out of time, so I hung the paper lanterns from our wedding 9+ years ago with pink and orange ribbon. This worked out well because Tessa's favorite word is "ball" and she could point at them and say "ball" all day long.

I also made the birthday banner (see top photo) digitally and printed out the letters on vellum card stock to give them a softer feel.

Through out the year I had tried to take pictures of Tessa each month to show how she is growing and changing. You will see that my initial format stopped working when she got to old to sit still (and not eat her sign), but at any rate, I had a picture to represent each month and we displayed them on scrapbook paper above the gift table.

GAMES & ACTIVITIES:

We invited families, so there were a lot of different age groups to consider. For the little ones, we had tons of balloons scattered around to play with, but the older kids enjoyed those more than the coloring activity I had planned for them. I made a cupcake coloring page and bought circle label stickers for them to put on as the sprinkles. I had thought to do a pin-the-candle-on-the-cupcake game (a la pin-the-tail-on-the donkey) but again, ran out of time.

The culminating activity (after cake and presents, of course) was the cupcake walk. We took squares of scrapbook paper (in coordinating colors, of course) and put numbers on them, and had everyone walk/dance to music around the circle until the music stopped. I boxed up some cupcakes for the grand prize. The most fun was watching the babies dance to music.

MY FAVORITE PART:

The best part of the party was watching my daughter walk around and dance in her birthday outfit. My mom made her this puffy tutu-type skirt that looked like orange frosting. We bought the pink shirt and I designed the cupcake graphic digitally (credits: Leora Saford and A Print a Day), and printed it on an iron-on transfer sheet. We ironed it on white fabric and Mom sewed it onto the shirt.

Here is the skirt in action!

It was a sweet day for my sweet girl!