Monday, November 28, 2011

Have a cupcake party second to none!

Time goes by so fast. I cannot believe my little girl is already one year old. It seems just a few days ago I held her in my arms, this tiny helpless creature crying for attention and food every two hours. And now she's about to start walking. I guess, we never realize how precious some moments in life are until they are gone. The time passes by so quickly and soon all we have left is memories. Sometimes I think that one of the reasons we have kids is to remind us about that, make us think and cherish those life moments.
Anyhow, sad and philosophical thoughts aside, we have celebrated our girl's first birthday and the party turned out to be a blast! At least I thought so :) Looks like this post is going to be more of a photo report of the event. Since a picture is worth a thousand words I'm including lots of pictures and I sure hope you find this is the case.
When I was planning the party I wanted to have some kind of fun gifts for kids. We did have 10 kids attending with their parents and I wanted to make this event fun for them too. It always seems like they are so bummed out that this one birthday child is getting all the presents! I didn't want to just give them candy, it's too cliche and too unhealthy :)

So I what came up with was something they could make themselves while having fun. We all know how much kids love stickers, not sure why... maybe it's the sticky part, or maybe the fact that you can affix those little pieces to almost anything and make it hard for mommy to take them off later :) wooden frames and stickers to decorate them. Each kid got one of these and they can be as creative as they want. We also took pictures of the birthday girl with each kid and I am going to mail these pictures to them to put into their frames.
All the kids wore special cone hats and seemed to like them :) And so did the birthday girl. She didn't even try to take it off which was quite a surprise to me because whenever I put a hat or some kind of hear piece on her she loves the challenge of taking it off as soon as she possibly can!
She got lots of presents. A lot of them were toys. It looks like it will be a while till I will have to buy her any new ones. I decided to put some away and give them to her later to avoid new toy overload syndrome. That is not a real disorder, of course, you get the sarcasm. But really how much stuff does a child really need? Sometimes I notice she would pick one thing and carry it around with her all day while all other toys are just laying on the floor. Every day she just seems to have this dig-through-the-basket-till-you-find-the-toy-of-the-day kind of game. I wonder if all kids do that.

I'm not sure how much she really understands and they say the first birthday is more for parents than for the kid, but the fact that somehow all that stuff was for her seemed to have come through just fine. She really had fun opening, or I should say helping me open her presents.

And this is what picture time looks like with a bunch of little ones. Some kept running away, some kept moving and turning. Out of some 20 shots this is the best one we got! Unbelievable!
When it comes to parties, let's be honest, it's ALWAYS about FOOD! I mean, really, would you be happily going to a 'party' knowing there will be no food? Who does that?

The fact that any gathering of people with the purpose of having fun needs to be accompanied by food is widely accepted. It is in our human nature I suppose. Good hosts always try to honor their guests with good food. So did I.

What was on the menu you'll ask. This time I went with the finger food buffet style. So here's the list: a cheese platter with english cheddar, baby brie and stilton with apricots, a veggie platter with creme fraiche dip, sausage and bacon quiche, spinach artichoke dip and a selection of mini sandwiches (barbecue chicken, mascarpone bacon, baba ganoush, salmon & egg, wasabi crab meat). Everything was home made and delicious. I did most of the cooking myself and of course I got lots of help from the closest family, that's what they are for, right?

So all in all the party came out great and even though planning and preparing for it took much time and effort it was all worth it in the end. So, there, happy birthday, my sweet Amelia!
A few people asked me how we got our daughter to show her age with her finger. Oh, I had a good laugh. There is no having her do anything you want, btw, unless she wants to do it. I don't think she knew what she was doing with that finger though :) She likes to point at things, that's her recent thing. It turned out pretty smart though in this picture, I like it. So there she is, our little cupcake.

1 comment:

  1. aww, sweet post! too bad we missed the party and the yummy food. :( Inna

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