Ladybug 1st Birthday Party

Last.week.was.INSANE.

Sorry again for the abandonment of the blog, but we celebrated Vivienne’s birthday on Saturday with her big first birthday bash. Her party just so happened to fall on my actual birthday (it was the only Saturday that really worked for it, and hey, I didn’t mind), so that made things a little more interesting, too.

Last week, I was up until midnight every night working on projects for her birthday party. It’s a little crazy, I’ll admit, since she’s ONE and doesn’t know or care about the details of her party, but what can I say? It’s who I am. My parties aren’t nearly as fancy as some of the ones you’ll see on Pinterest, but I do like to pour my blood, sweat and tears into a handful of things—namely desserts—to make an impact. After all, baking and cake/cookie decorating has been a hobby of mine for quite a few years now, and I don’t get a chance to do it nearly as often as I did before kids came along. So once (well, now twice) a year or so, I like to stretch my baking/decorating legs and make a disaster out of my kitchen for a week.

Anyway, in planning Vivienne’s first birthday, we somehow landed on a ladybug theme, for no other reason than it seemed like it would be cute and the color scheme would be different than the traditional pinks and purples often associated with little girls. I drew major inspiration from Pinterest, of course. And Google Images.

I bought her invitation design from Etsy seller Arthomer. That photo was taken at the beginning of July and it is CRAZY how much older she looks now, I think. Those two front teeth (which were just making their way through in the pic) make a huge difference! My baaaaabyyyyy. Gah.

And yes, I did make her a tutu. It was too adorable to pass up. I used this tutorial and it was really easy. I made two of them, actually, because I knew that once Nora saw Vivienne’s, she was going to want one for herself. So I bought supplies to make two, and threw a purple one together for Nora to wear for dress up. And hell, maybe even dance class. Vivienne’s shirt is a Carter’s onesie that I had embroidered by a local woman who does them. And the birthday crown is compliments of Mary, the girls’ daycare provider, who makes them for every birthday for each of the kids she watches. She hand cuts all of those little flowers around the headband… they’re pretty amazing and special.

THE SWEETS! All the fruits of my labor. The cake, the cookies, the smash cake, the pretzels. Oh, and the cake smash collage. More on all of that in a minute.

The week before the party, I was stressing about the weather… well, as much as I will allow myself to stress about weather. I mean, I know I can’t control it so I don’t get TOO worked up about it, but I did check weather.com at least once a day to see what the forecast was like. Rain, no rain, rain, no rain. It kept changing. Finally, the day of the party, we had a pretty good chance for rain, but thankfully not until late afternoon. The temperature was cool—I think it maybe hit 75 degrees at most—and it was overcast most of the day, but honestly, I thought it was perfect weather for an outdoor party. Worst case, we would’ve moved into our house and/or garage, but when you’re expecting 35-40 people at your house, including a boat load of kids? YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO BE IN THE BACKYARD. Especially when you have a new swing set that you want all of the kids to enjoy.

And enjoy they did. The swing set was a hit, as were our sand table and play house. The kids ran wild, and it was awesome.

We chose to start the party at 11:00 a.m., which I think most of the parents appreciated since it accommodated nap times pretty well! Vivienne typically wakes up from her morning nap around 11:00, and goes back down around 2:00, so we figured this would be the best window of time for our little birthday girl.

We served lunch—pulled chicken, baked beans, pasta salad, broccoli salad, a green salad. It worked out well. We are known to order pizza for this sort of thing (no muss, no fuss!) but this was a nice change from the norm, and didn’t add too much stress or work to the party day.

There’s Nora, chowing down on my mom’s cowboy caviar (a.k.a. Texas caviar), only the best appetizer EVER. We have her make it for every family gathering because it’s such a crowd pleaser. And it’s not even THAT terrible for you as far as snack foods are concerned.

The week before the party, I went to Walmart to pick up a few party supplies and I hit the Ladybug Party JACKPOT in their party section. I picked up ladybug appetizer/snack plates, table cloths, masks and noisemakers, ladybug straws for the kids. Other than that, I stuck to solid red and black for balloons, plates, napkins, cups, and plasticware.

I also found ladybug stickers, mini clothes pins, and black ribbon with white polka dots. (Inspiration.) I put the stickers on clothespins to put up this little display of Vivienne’s month-by-month pictures.

We did gifts right out in the middle of our yard. I love summer birthdays! Vivienne was randomly into stuff I opened, like tissue paper, a turtle toy, and a PACKAGE OF SOCKS. Babies are weird.

Nora was my big helper, of course, and she provided hilarious commentary throughout the whole process. As we opened up that big Minnie Mouse plane ride-on toy above? Nora was all wide-eyed, looked at me seriously and goes, “Mommy, WE SHARE IT.” It’s gotta be pretty awesome to have a baby sister who you can essentially steal things from and she barely knows the difference. :) Another funny moment was when I opened a card and a gift card fell out, which was inside of a little red envelope with a small white bulls eye on it. “TARGET!” Nora yelled excitedly. Oh, Target. Your branding? It is effective… even on 3 year olds.

After presents? It was time for dessert.

I probably need to do a whole post on the ladybug cake. It’s not anything SUPER major in terms of construction and decoration, and I didn’t take any step-by-step pictures to illustrate, but I could go into some detail about how I tackled this cake. So yeah, I’ll plan on that. If you’re interested in more info on this guy lady, be on the lookout for that post. But overall? I was really happy with how this turned out. I think it’s one of my favorite cakes I’ve done.

Sugar cookie cutouts! (Inspiration.) I got nervous about these while I was in the process of decorating them, but I needn’t have worried. Adding the finishing touches to everything—the outlines, the dots on the flowers, etc.—really helped everything to come together. I really loved these, too. They are so time consuming, but so worth it. We didn’t do goody bags or packaged favors or anything… we just sent people home with a few of these babies.

…AND these babies. These are candy coated pretzels, made with the Wilton candy melts you can pick up at craft stores. (Inspiration.) I thought these would be an “easy” project to take on (in addition to EVERYTHING ELSE!) but they ended up being more of a pain/more time consuming than I thought. When dipping and decorating these guys took up an entire evening last week, I was sort of regretting them. But they’re awesome, so all’s well that ends well. I never found real directions on these, but they’re pretty easy to figure out. I’ll type up some quick instructions (again, I don’t have any step-by-step photos) and throw them in the same post as the ladybug cake explanation. Coming soon this week, I promise.

We did the cake smash photo shoot several weeks ago, before we even went on vacation to the Outer Banks. I used the photos and the same collage design that I used for Nora three years ago. Had it printed up and framed it for display at the party. We plan to hang it next to Nora’s in our playroom.

Finally? The smash cake. It’s a single layer, 6″ round—no big deal. I had several visions for how I was going to decorate this, and thought I had settled on mimicking one of the flower cookies. Green base, white flower with black polka dots, put a tiny ladybug on the flower. But the night before the party, as I was icing it, I had a change of heart. I wanted a ladybug to be the main focus again, so I opted to do a simple ladybug on top instead. I used my ladybug cookie cutter (used for the cutout cookies above) and pressed it into the top of the cake. From there, I filled it in with color. Easy peasy.

Speaking of the smash cake? Vivienne SMASHED IT. Go figure.

She needed no help, no encouragement. As soon as we were done singing, the candle was blown out, and we set that thing down in front of her, she immediately began raking her fingers across the icing and stuffing handfuls of it into her mouth. I’m guessing the cake smash photo shoot and the piece of cake she had on her actual birthday served as really good practice. She nailed it.

We ended up cutting her off after she had made a pretty sizable dent in the cake itself. She didn’t even protest, so I’m thinking she was pretty full by that point. Michael took her up for a quick bath while I served cake and ice cream to everyone else.

After cake, people started taking off to enjoy the rest of their afternoons elsewhere. Our close family stayed put for a while longer to hang out. And not too long after we had cleaned up and moved inside? The rain started. Luck was on our side for this one; fingers crossed we get a good day for Nora’s party next month! (Last year, it POURED on Nora’s birthday. POURED!)

Thankfully, we remembered to have a few family snapshots taken during the party to mark the occasion. None of them perfect, but perfectly imperfect, I suppose. :)

It was busy, and it was exhausting, but it was fun. And it wasn’t a bad way to celebrate my own birthday. Rock on, 32!