Madeleine's 1st Birthday

My youngest daughter, Madeleine, turned one at the end of May.  How that's possible, I have no idea.  It doesn't seem possible that she could be a year old and now she's almost 14 months old and I still have a hard time saying she's a toddler and not a baby!

For her first birthday, we planned a "cute as a button" celebration.  Since we all know that 1st birthday parties are really for the parents anyway since one year olds don't really care what they do, I came up with this one early on.  I found a button cake on Pinterest a long time ago -- probably sometime while I was pregnant with my first baby.  I filed it away and thought nothing more of it until I was pregnant with Madeleine.  Then I thought about using it for a baby shower but didn't have an opportunity to throw one and then I decided it would make a great theme for a birthday party as well.

The cakes are both traditional vanilla birthday cake - you can find the recipe on this post, but it's a slightly adapted recipe from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook.

This was a pretty light theme, we had cute as a button cookies, a button cake, and a few decorations but we also just had a great summer birthday party and let the kids play outside and tried not to go overboard on decorations and such.

For the main button cake, I covered it in homemade marshmallow fondant, and then made little button cutouts out of pink and yellow fondant to decorate the cake and add to the sugar cookies as well.  Marshmallow fondant is really easy to make and simple to work with.  You can find my recipe as well as some tips on this post.   If you want another example, check out this post from Aubrey's 2nd birthday party for a look at her Sesame Street cake.

For food, we did a self-serve burger bar and grilled up beef and turkey burgers and offered tons of choices for condiments.  We had the standard ketchup, mustard, pickles, and cheese but also offered more fun toppings like chipotle mayo, sriracha sauce, jalepenos and banana peppers, grilled pineapple, and crispy bacon.

We had a variety of chips and dips - a hot and spicy corn dip, hummus and crackers, and guacamole, because we don't have parties without guacamole.  We had a vegetable platter and fruit salad as well.

For desserts, we had cookies and cake and homemade vanilla ice cream.  The cookies are my normal sugar cookie recipe - these are so easy to make and you can make the cookie dough ahead of time and freeze it to save time for the party.  You can also bake the cookies in advance and freeze if you prefer but I would recommend waiting to frost and decorate until closer to party time.  I always like to do mine within a day or two of the party and then store between layers of parchment paper once the royal icing is completely dry (overnight) in an airtight container.   You can find the recipe in this post.

Of course, I made Madeleine her own smash cake.  She had some fun getting into the icing and cake but wanted nothing to do with the cold ice cream.  A few weeks later she tried it again though and decided it was pretty good stuff so rest assured, she's a normal kid!  For the smash cake, fondant isn't really practical.  It's too hard for the little ones to get through so I always stick with a simple buttercream icing.  I also tend to put it on pretty thin so it's not quite as gooey for them.  Also make sure you don't decorate with anything that could be a choking hazard.  I used the large thin candy wafers on this one.  They basically dissolve in your mouth and break up really easily.

Thumbs up for cake!  

Happy birthday baby girl - I can't believe you're already a toddler.  The first year was so much fun and the days just keep getting better.  You and your sister are the best of friends and you are the sweetest little girl.  I'm so thankful everyday to be blessed with two beautiful, happy, healthy baby girls.  I love you with all my heart sweet birthday girl!

A Book Baby Shower

My little sister is having her first baby - literally any day now - and we had an absolutely adorable shower for her a couple of months ago.   Yes, it was in April, and I'm just now posting about it - it happens.

I started out on Pinterest to find some ideas and quickly had about four different themes planned when I realized that they all revolved around children's books.  Reading with my kids is one of my favorite moments of the day and they both love books.  I hope that Nikki will enjoy reading with baby Colton just as much and we wanted to get her library started for him.

I love how this shower turned out and was so happy to get to throw it -- now I just can't wait to meet baby Colton!!

I took a few shortcuts with the food on this shower since I was travelling by plane to get there.  We ordered the cake from a bakery and everything on the menu was quick and easy to prepare.

For the invitations, I just put together some images of the characters in several of the books we were using.  I made coordinating signs for each of the dishes on the menu as well to tie the food into the book theme.

The menu and book pairings included:

Sam I Am's Green Deviled Eggs - complete with the egg whites dyed green instead of the egg yolks - based on a Pinterest tutorial I found here, you can dye eggs any color you want and it doesn't affect the flavor at all.

Guess How Much I Love You Veggies and Hummus - it was a stretch but it's "bunny food" and I love this book.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar's Fruit and Yogurt Dip

Where The Wild Things Are & Max's Turkey "Muenster" Sandwiches - a simple sandwich with shaved turkey breast, muenster cheese, baby spinach and mustard.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - with a quick chili sauce and grape jelly sauced meatball.

If You Give a Mouse a Snickerdoodle - we subbed in Snickerdoodles since they are my sister's favorite.

Jamberry Pies - if you've never heard of the book Jamberry you should look it up, such a cute rhyming story.  I made mini cherry, lemon and apple pies in a muffin tin taking some help from refrigerated pie crust for this one.

And from Giraffe's Cant Dance, Gerald's (non-alcoholic of course) Jungle Juice.

We also used Good Night Moon as a guest book, asking guests to leave a message for Mom or baby.

I made a simple diaper cake and added signs from the book Little Blue Truck and found some animal baby toys to add in for extra fun.

One of the best things about the baby shower was the onesie decorating station we set up outside in lieu of playing traditional shower games.  We had so much fun decorating onesies with fabric paint and stencils and iron-on transfers and they turned out so cute!

Aubrey's Elmo Birthday Party

My daughter Aubrey turned two in February.  I still can't believe I have a two year old.  She's grown up so much and changed so fast in these past few months.  Her vocabulary has exploded and she's becoming a little parrot.

Although it took her a while to start saying a lot of the words she knew, one that she's had down for a long long time is "Elmo".  The red furry monster is definitely a favorite for her.  Although Sesame Street is now vying for the top TV request with "the Mouse" I think it's safe to say Elmo will be a favorite for a while.  When it came time to think about a theme for Aubrey's second birthday, there was no question that Elmo and friends would be perfect.

I started with an invitation that my sister, Nikki of Doodle Dog Advertising designed for me.  From there Pinterest and Party City helped me out with a few ideas.  My friend Sarah of Sarah's Shirts made Aubrey's adorable Elmo shirt.  I just love how it turned out and it's one of her favorites in her closet.

Elmo invitations from Doodle Dog Advertising

Aubrey was in awe when she came downstairs the morning of the party to see that Elmo was everywhere.  We had hung a great big mural of Sesame Street characters on the wall and Aubrey loved them.  I made Elmo and Cookie Monster cookies that she loved, all we heard was "cookie pleeeeease mama."  I haven't worked with fondant in a long time and need to practice a bit more, I ran out of time towards the end on the cake but I think it turned out pretty cute although I would have done a few things differently next time.  The fruit and vegetable trays were one of my favorite ideas I found on Pinterest, they turned out so cute!  We made thank you bags for the kiddos... I just picked up some small red paper bags and filled them with some Sesame Street bubbles, a character medal, some Elmo tattoos, a Memory game, and some candy.  I printed out thank you labels on the Sesame Street sign and folded them over the tops of the bags to close them.

Elmo and Cookie Monster Cookies

Sugar cookie recipes can be found here - I used royal icing to decorate these in layers.  I drew the eyeballs on with an edible marker.  Although they take a bit of time, I love decorating cookies with royal icing.

Sesame Street Cake

I baked this cake, it's one of my favorites as it's a very traditional yellow cake recipe.  I think it's perfect for a kid's party, nothing fancy but it's delicious and it stays so moist.  I brush the layers with a simple syrup before frosting to lock in moisture and use vanilla bean paste instead of extract to add even more flavor.  I filled it with a simple vanilla buttercream and used the same to crumb coat and frost the outside before covering it with fondant.  The fondant is homemade marshmallow fondant, see this post for the recipe and tips.  While it's a little more work, it tastes so much better than the storebought kind.

Oscar and Elmo vegetable and fruit platters

 Oscar is made crispy kale chips, black olives for a mouth, carrots for a nose, and sliced portabello mushrooms for eyebrows.  Some garlic hummus in small plastic cups make up his eyes.  Elmo's face is made up of sliced strawberries.  Sliced purple grapes make his wide mouth and peeled orange slices are his nose.  His eyes are cups filled with marshmallow cream cheese fruit dip.

Opening presents - she had so much fun with it this year!

Pin the Nose on Elmo - stickers are lots of fun for Aubrey and her best buddy Hannah

Aubrey and Madeleine loved the huge "scene setter" I picked up from Party City.  It's actually about 5' by 5' or something huge so it was fun for the girls to see the great big characters in their living room.  Definitely worth the $6 price tag at Party City - I can't believe how nice this was for the cheap price tag.

We had so much fun celebrating with so many friends and family members.  Thank you so much to all of you who came to celebrate my baby girl turning two!

Happy birthday Aubrey!  I can't believe how much you have grown and changed over the past two years.  You continue to amaze me every day with how much goes through your curious little mind.  You are constantly learning and sharing new things.  While these past two years have flown by, it also seems like you've been a part of my life forever.  I love you little girl!

My baby girl turned One!

Yes it was two months ago... and I'm just now getting around to sharing a few of the details.  I know, life has been a little crazy around here as we prepare for baby number 2... can't believe she'll be here in another 6 weeks or so, and try to finish up all the remodeling projects - the new nursery and master bathroom being at the top of the list.  But even in those two months, I still can't believe my baby girl is over a year old, walking, jabbering constantly and really developing quite the personality.

For Aubrey's party - we did a little bit of a circus/carnival theme - I'll admit largely due to the fact that I was slightly obsessed with the pennant flag banners that are popping up all over the place right now.  I just love them and thought they would make adorable party decor.  My sister Nikki, of Doodle Dog Advertising, made some adorable invitations for the party featuring a cute little elephant that I decided to use for the cookies too.

Photo by DoodleDog Advertising

I combined the elephants with some friendly little lions inspired by cookies that I had bookmarked quite a while ago from Bridget at Bake at 350.  I love the way they turned out, but a word of warning, don't ever try to layer your cookies with wax paper when you run out of parchment paper at 10 pm, the wax paper stuck to the frosting in several places and I had to do some minor cookie reconstructive surgery the day of the party.  My go to sugar cookie recipe can be found here.

For the cakes, I knew I wanted to make Aubrey a simple smash cake and I tied the main cake back to our circus theme with a mini-pennant banner strung from plastic carnival stripe straws.

I used a basic white cake recipe (also seen here) from Magnolia Bakery for both to keep things simple and filled and frosted them with a simple buttercream.  Sprinkles and a fun corkscrew candle were all the decoration the smash cake needed and a simple dot pattern adorned the main cake.

Finally I made a 3rd cake (2nd smash cake) for a photo shoot with Dede Holman Photography the following week so we could have some adorable pictures to document the occasion.

Photo by Dede Holman Photography

For other food at the party I stuck with some simple spins on carnival food - spicy whiskey BBQ sliders (slightly modified from Pioneer Woman - I used ground turkey instead of beef and cut out the majority of the butter and served them on Hawaiian roles), kettle corn, fruit skewers on a stick and animal crackers with a vanilla honey yogurt dip (a simple combination of vanilla yogurt, a little honey for sweetness and some lime zest), nachos with cheese dip and guacamole, mini corndogs muffins (recipe found on Iowa Girl Eats) and veggies and dip.

Traditional White Birthday Cake
Recipe slightly adapted from Magnolia Bakery Cookbook

Cake:
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 cups self-rising flour
1 cup whole milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 egg whites

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray 3 8" baking pans baking spray and line the bottoms with parchment rounds.

Cream the butter on medium high speed until smooth. Add the sugar gradually, beating until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Combine milk and vanilla in a measuring cup. Add flour in 3 parts, alternating with the milk, beating well after each addition, beginning and ending with flour. Set batter aside.

Add egg whites to a clean mixing bowl and begin beating on low speed, gradually increasing speed to high as egg whites thicken. Beat until the egg whites make soft peaks. Gently fold into cake batter, 1/3 at a time.

Bake 22-25 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in pans for about 5 minutes, loosen the edges with a knife if necessary, and turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.


Note: this recipe will make 2 2-layer 6" smash cakes or 1 3 layer 8" cake, so double the recipe if you want to make the 2-tier cake and a smash cake.  In the pictures above, the smash cakes are each built with 2 6" cakes cut in half horizontally to make 4 total thin layers and then torted with buttercream.  The 2-tier cake is done the same way with a 6" cake over an 8" cake.  I did use small wooden dowels for stability when stacking the tiers.

Buttercream Icing

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup heavy cream

1 lb powdered sugar

Beat butter in a large mixing bowl for 2-3 minutes until smooth and creamy, add in vanilla and cream and mix on low speed until incorporated.  Add powdered sugar in a several additions to prevent it from making a giant cloud of sugar all over your kitchen.  Mix on low speed until incorporated and increase speed gradually to medium high and whip an additional 1-2 minutes.  Icing should be thick but easily spreadable. 

Note: this will make enough icing to torte and ice at least one smash cake but you will need more to do all of the cakes above.