Baby's First Birthday Party!

Sorry for the absence in posting.  I have been doing other things, including planning my son's first birthday party!  He turned 1 on August 22 and I can't believe it!  Here is what I did for a simple party...

First of all, the color scheme.  I didn't have a "theme" such as tractors, Sesame Street, etc., but I did choose a color theme of yellow, blue, and red (primary colors).  The first appearance of this was in the invitation.

It was double-sided.  I blurred out the location information because of paranoia of posting personal information for web searches to find (my personal blog is not crawler-indexed).

For his party, I got simple red, blue, yellow, and white tablecloths from Hobby Lobby.  Cheap, simple, it works!  Decorations were minimal, mostly just balloons that blew away before the majority of the guests arrived.  We did have some party favors though.

As for the cake and ice cream, I did a couple different things.  For the ice cream I cheated and bought ice cream sandwiches and some of those ice cream cup things.  For the majority of the cupcakes, I used box cake mix, but I made the baby's own personal cake from scratch and made 9 cupcakes from the remainder.  The recipe I used is from here.  Even though it is technically a cupcake recipe, it worked perfectly for a cake because it is pretty much flat when it is baked.  Just make sure that you don't underbake it (like I did with the cake).  It will still be done in the middle, it will just sink a little.  Also don't overbake it (which I did with the cupcakes).  This will make it too dry.  They are REALLY good, just a little particular.  The frosting recipe I used is here.  It is also really good, and really easy (with a KitchenAid stand mixer).  I didn't use the clear vanilla, just the regular imitation vanilla and the frosting still turned out white.

Here are the cupcakes I made for the guests from cake mix.  I had to frost them at the park because I didn't have enough containers to transport 36 frosted cupcakes.  I put the frosting in the cooler with the rest of the ice cream, but it got a little too cold and it was EXTREMELY hard to pipe.  So, the cupcakes didn't get completely frosted.  Oh well.  I got the red, blue, and yellow cupcake liners from JoAnns.  They have tons of cute ones!

With the leftover frosting from the baby's cake, I had some fun.  I found how to do this one here.

This one didn't turn out so pretty because I was running out of frosting.  I got the idea for this one from here.

Last, but not least, the cake.  Here it is:

Most importantly though, did the baby like it?

Yes, he he liked the sugar overload...a LOT!  The red and white frosting mixed together to make it pink.  Oops!  I guess I should have thought about that!

Happy Birthday, Jared!