Baby Boy's 1st Birthday Party

My darling little boy turned One last week.  I have no idea where that year went.  He is the most delightful little soul and is loving, funny and sweet and best of all, a real Mama's boy!


I have had a LOT of fun over the past couple of months planning his birthday party.  I possibly need to get back to my day job of events as it's quite clear I have too much time on my hands!!!

I found inspiration from a couple of lovely blogs.  Firstly, the beautiful Eat, Drink, Chic blog - here and here.  And the main source of inspiration was from the gorgeous Rubyellen over at Mycakies who held a Breakfast 1st Birthday Party for her third baby girl Soul.  See her gorgeous party here.  


I also got a lot of inspiration from images on Pinterest.  Too many to link!


I went with a theme of Grey, Yellow & White and started by making decorations.  I went to Spotlight when they had a huge 40% off fabric sale and found some cheap but cheerful fabric and made some very simple bunting.

Then I made tissue paper Pom Poms a la Martha Stewart - see tutorial here.  I have adored these Pom Poms for a long time and when my lovely friend Renae made them for her little boy's birthday earlier this year, I knew I had to try to replicate them.  They were simple but fiddly.  I made about 20 of them!

I also made a string of black & white photos which you can see in the background of the food bench.  

Instead of Goody Bags, I decided to Cupcakes in a Jar - also inspired by Rubyellen.  Check out her tutorial here.  I used recycled organic baby apple jars - they are tiny but cute!  The cake was my go to vanilla butter cake and the frosting was one of the Magnolia Bakery recipes which I found here.  I topped them with homemade thank you tags which matched my invitations as well as some Devine Twine from and a leftover swatch of bunting fabric & attached a wooden teaspoon.

I designed the menu to be very easy on the actual day so that I could spend the morning with my kids rather than in the kitchen so I made most of the food ahead of time.


I made these Donna Hay Pancetta Cups the week before and froze them.  They reheated brilliantly and although I don't eat them, I've been told they were delicious! They went in 5 minutes flat! Lucky I had a few trays of them.  I will post the recipe and photos of making them at a later date.

Blinis with Smoked Salmon, sour cream & chives - adapted from this recipe.

Sweet pikelet stacks - inspired by this photo.  Recipe adapted from here. These were the hit of the day. I made about 150 pikelets and it took AGES.  I should have made 400!!!  I adore the syrup jug I bought from Emerald & Ella.

The cereal Bar was cute but not as popular as I thought and I seriously over-catered in this area.  My homemade maple muesli was a hit (see details here) and the kids liked the rice puffs and O's but I had LOADS leftover so I gave little bags of leftover muesli to the people who loved it.

Little fruit cups.

Recycled Italian soda bottles filled with milk, water & cloudy apple juice.

For the birthday cake I used the same mixture as the cakes in jars but with an adaptation of a  Donna Hay cream cheese frosting. I shaved Green & Blacks white chocolate on top.  It was yummy!!!  I topped the cake with some homemade mini bunting.  Idea inspired by this picture.

Apart from being a pretty day, it was a lovely, fun day and my gorgeous little boy did very well!!! He wasn't loving being passed around so I tried to cuddle him as much as possible and he had fun playing on the floor with his little baby friends.  He coped well with the happy birthday singing and straight after the cutting of the cake, he fell asleep in my mum's arms despite the very noisy room!!!!


I had fun and my toddler and husband did too.  There were lots of kids and wonderful friends and adoring family members there creating a great morning for all.  We are very lucky to have such a little treasure in our lives and I had a lot of fun creating a special day to pay tribute to him.


Love Amy xoxo

Toasted Maple Muesli

This weekend I’m having a Breakfast 1st Birthday Party for my little boy. I got the idea of having a breakfast party from one of my favourite blogs – http://mycakies.blogspot.com/ 

One item on the menu is homemade toasted muesli. I got the inspiration for my recipe from here.

Here is my adaptation. 

Toasted maple muesli 

Ingredients:

· About 5 cups (500 grams) old-fashioned rolled oats (not instant)

· 1.5 cups unsalted peanuts

· 1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds

· 1/2 cup (45 grams) raw pepitas (pumpkin seeds)

· 1/8 cup linseeds

· 1/3 cup sesame seeds

· A couple of pinches of freshly ground nutmeg

· 1/2 teaspoon salt

· 4 tablespoons vegetable oil

· 225 ml pure maple syrup

· 1 teaspoon vanilla paste 

Directions:

· Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius (fan forced)

· Line 2 large baking sheets with baking paper

· In a large bowl combine the rolled oats, nuts, seeds, nutmeg, and salt. 

· In a small jug, stir together the oil, maple syrup & vanilla paste.

· Pour this mixture over the dry ingredients and toss together, making sure all the dry ingredients are coated with the liquid.




· Spread onto the prepared baking sheet and bake for about 30 - 40 minutes or until golden brown, stirring regularly so the mixture browns evenly. 

If you like dried fruit in your muesli you could add 2 cups of dried cranberries, cherries, apricots, dates, figs, and/or raisins after the muesli is cooked and cooled completely. If you are feeling indulgent, you could add ½-1 cup of chopped good quality chocolate. I tried some muesli with some regular choc chips cut in half and it was ridiculously yum!!! Next time I’m going to add some chopped Green & Blacks chocolate to a small portion!

All ready for the party!!!!

Love Amy xoxo

First Birthday Party Memories

My second little boy turns one next week. I can hardly believe it! His big brother will turn 3 in a month. I definitely can't believe I've been a mama for nearly 3 years! Although, of course, it feels like I've known them forever in some ways.  I'm in the middle of planning my little boy's first birthday party and reminiscing about my toddler's first birthday party.

Here is what my toddler's first birthday looked like.  I have so many beautiful photos of my son and our family and friends celebrating at the party, but haven't quite figured out where I sit with putting photos of my kids up on this very new blog.  I'll keep thinking over that one for a bit longer!!!!
You may have already seen some of these pictures in my earlier sewing post.

Mini cupcakes ready to go in their little boxes

Mini plastic pails from a $2 type shop for about 10 cents each - with special custom stickers using one of the images from the invitation paper I bought (the custom scanning, cropping & editing of the stickers was care of one of my clever friends!)

Me working hard decorating the big cake:

Goody Bags lined up with lots of fun treats:

 Decorations at my mum's house - aka Party Central (we had the party there as we were still building our house!!!)  The photo mobile idea I got from one of my first favourite blogs - she no longer blogs there due to a not very nice occurrence but her archives are worth a browse-  http://katiedid.squarespace.com/katie-did-journal/2008/9/14/showering-the-bride.html

Party Food!
Homemade Granita - My Sicilian Heritage Mr's speciality!

More mini cupcakes

Fruit Platter

The birthday cake! A la Australian Women's Weekly Birthday Cake Book - original edition - the same book all of my birthday cakes came from.

In addition to the kids goody bags & mini cupcake pails, I got some cardboard food boxes from Lomards and put a large version of the custom made Thank You sticker on them to fill with slices of birthday cake for the adults to take with them.

This was such a fun party to plan and a really fun party to have!  I'd spent a few weeks brainwashing teaching the birthday boy how the happy birthday, hip, hip hurray thing works and on the day he raised his arms and screamed "hurray" at the top of his lungs after everyone else had sung!  He was a crowd pleaser from the very early days!  I don't think my little bub will be quite the show off! He's a real cuddly mama's boy, so is more likely to shed a tear at all of the people singing at him! Fingers crossed he manages to enjoy his day.

The night after my first son's party, we tucked him in to bed and I was teary at the memories of 12 months earlier and the first time we met.  He changed our lives in an instant and it was lovely to celebrate his first birthday in such a lovely, big way.  Last year, for his 2nd birthday, I was stuck at home with a 3 week old baby, so we had a little playdate with 3 of his little friends (my friend's kids) which he was old enough to enjoy.  This year we will probably do a weekday playdate with some of his friends from playgroup & my friends kids who are the same age.  A 2 hour early lunch play.  No big crowd or weekend party with 50 people.  Nice and low key and easy to manage toddler who can be over-stimulated easy!

But before we get to toddler's 3rd birthday, I have a first birthday party to carryout for my darling little baby.  Fingers crossed it's a fun morning with everyone behaving themselves and getting along well!

Love Amy xoxo