Little Miss Sunshine - Daphne's First Birthday Party (Part One)
*Warning: a few people asked me to show them all the details from Daphne's party, so this post probably has more details than most of you will care to read. Just check out how cute Daphne was eating her cake if you're short on time! :)
For Daphne's first birthday I decided to do a sunshine themed party. It seemed the perfect theme for our sweet baby girl who sprinkles sunshine and laughter everywhere she goes.
For Daphne's first birthday I decided to do a sunshine themed party. It seemed the perfect theme for our sweet baby girl who sprinkles sunshine and laughter everywhere she goes.
The invitation. I blacked out our contact information - you never know who might come across your info on the interweb!
I have been loving the colors gray and yellow and started out with that as my color scheme, but it morphed into mostly yellow and teal which seemed more bright and warm for our summer baby.
Originally I thought we'd just do cake and ice cream for the family, but then I wanted to invite the neighbors and a few friends too. What started out as a "small get-together" turned into a 40 person celebration! However, I didn't feel too overboard when our Hispanic neighbors up the street threw their baby's 1-year-old party and rented a bounce house, catered out, etc. When I asked her how it went she said, "Oh, we kept it really simple." All about perspective, right? :)
A few weeks before her birthday, I made a clothespin picture banner as a backdrop to hang in our windows showing a picture from each month of Daphne's life. It was hard for me to choose just one for each month and so fun to see how she's grown!
I went searching for printables on Pinterest and found these two adorable freebies (found HERE) for table decor. Just a heads up if you decide to print them, they are more of a mustard yellow color than the buttercup tone they look like on the girls website. Still cute, but I ended up with tons of different shades of yellow instead of a uniform tone.
(You can see a couple of the yellow puff balls in this picture)
Shannon taught me how to make puff balls out of yellow tissue paper and I reused the teal lanterns from our wedding reception to hang throughout the room. We pushed all the furniture aside to have card tables staggered throughout the room (until we realized the kids would spill on the carpet and then we promptly moved them to the tile). We used cheapo dollar store yellow and teal table clothes and had lemon heads and butterscotch candies in glass bowels to brighten up the tables. Originally I had planned on having Daffodils (I have to think about how to spell that word now as we call Daphne "Daphodil" all the time!) as center pieces, but ran out of time and energy by the afternoon of the party. I forgot to take pictures of the room before all the guest showed up and then we had cleaned everything up before I thought of it again.
As for food, we all know I am not a good cook and the thought of trying to make themed food was just too much for me this time. Maybe next year. However, I was pretty pleased that we could buy "Sunny D" (hee hee! our sunny little D!) easy peasy for drinks. Also, forgot to take a picture of the food, but we just had meat, cheese, lettuce, etc to build your roll sandwiches plus chips, watermelon and carrots for the side. Nothing fancy, just wanted people to be fed before cake.
Oh my...the cake. What a travesty!
Let's talk about this cake for a minute. So CLEARLY I've never made a cake before. Never ever! I had such a great vision in my head for how brilliant this sunshine cake would look, but it was a total flop. I had no idea cake decorating was so hard! Right as we were getting to crunch time, I realized the icing tube I had bought for the lettering was white and thought, "Hey, no problem, just cut off the top, add food coloring, spoon it back in." Long story short, the icing was dripping all over my hands while I was trying to write it and falling all over the cake. Burke took over for the "Happy Birthday Daphne" on the smash cake, but we got so frustrated her name never made it on there. Good thing Daphne could care less.
We made a separate smash cake for Daphne, thinking she was just going to destroy it over the excitement of the sugar rush (we have never really given her sugar before), but we probably could have just done a cupcake. Daphne was so dainty, dipping one little finger at a time into the frosting and eventually just sucking on her whole hand. She hardly made a dent in it, but seemed happy enough, kicking her little legs back and forth and checking out all her friends watching her every move.
One of the first things I learned about my father-in-law is that he absolutely loves watching a baby eat their very first cake. It delights him to no end and I was so happy to capture this picture of Daphne and Grandpa laughing together. So candid!
After I cleaned Daphne up, we had the kids play "Pin the Shades on Little Miss Sunshine". Isn't that sun hilarious? An artist I am not, but they thought it was a pretty cool game and that's all you can hope for.
I gave the kids their own little dollar store sunglasses after they played and they were good sports to pose for a group shot. (Some of the kids were elsewhere, so we're missing the 3 Holt boys, Eden, Levi, Paxon, Lyndee Jo, Jade, Hallie, Amelia, Hudson and Brinlee in the group pic). Since we had so many people, I had anticipated we would want to clear the kids out of the house and sent them out to play in the yard with their own little bubbles and squirt guns. It gave the adults a moment to relax and visit - my favorite!
A few weeks before her birthday, I made a clothespin picture banner as a backdrop to hang in our windows showing a picture from each month of Daphne's life. It was hard for me to choose just one for each month and so fun to see how she's grown!
I went searching for printables on Pinterest and found these two adorable freebies (found HERE) for table decor. Just a heads up if you decide to print them, they are more of a mustard yellow color than the buttercup tone they look like on the girls website. Still cute, but I ended up with tons of different shades of yellow instead of a uniform tone.
As for food, we all know I am not a good cook and the thought of trying to make themed food was just too much for me this time. Maybe next year. However, I was pretty pleased that we could buy "Sunny D" (hee hee! our sunny little D!) easy peasy for drinks. Also, forgot to take a picture of the food, but we just had meat, cheese, lettuce, etc to build your roll sandwiches plus chips, watermelon and carrots for the side. Nothing fancy, just wanted people to be fed before cake.
Oh my...the cake. What a travesty!
Let's talk about this cake for a minute. So CLEARLY I've never made a cake before. Never ever! I had such a great vision in my head for how brilliant this sunshine cake would look, but it was a total flop. I had no idea cake decorating was so hard! Right as we were getting to crunch time, I realized the icing tube I had bought for the lettering was white and thought, "Hey, no problem, just cut off the top, add food coloring, spoon it back in." Long story short, the icing was dripping all over my hands while I was trying to write it and falling all over the cake. Burke took over for the "Happy Birthday Daphne" on the smash cake, but we got so frustrated her name never made it on there. Good thing Daphne could care less.
We made a separate smash cake for Daphne, thinking she was just going to destroy it over the excitement of the sugar rush (we have never really given her sugar before), but we probably could have just done a cupcake. Daphne was so dainty, dipping one little finger at a time into the frosting and eventually just sucking on her whole hand. She hardly made a dent in it, but seemed happy enough, kicking her little legs back and forth and checking out all her friends watching her every move.
One of the first things I learned about my father-in-law is that he absolutely loves watching a baby eat their very first cake. It delights him to no end and I was so happy to capture this picture of Daphne and Grandpa laughing together. So candid!
After I cleaned Daphne up, we had the kids play "Pin the Shades on Little Miss Sunshine". Isn't that sun hilarious? An artist I am not, but they thought it was a pretty cool game and that's all you can hope for.
I gave the kids their own little dollar store sunglasses after they played and they were good sports to pose for a group shot. (Some of the kids were elsewhere, so we're missing the 3 Holt boys, Eden, Levi, Paxon, Lyndee Jo, Jade, Hallie, Amelia, Hudson and Brinlee in the group pic). Since we had so many people, I had anticipated we would want to clear the kids out of the house and sent them out to play in the yard with their own little bubbles and squirt guns. It gave the adults a moment to relax and visit - my favorite!
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