Baby Boy Cake Batter Rainbow Sprinkle Birthday Party

First birthday’s are so FUN! A mix of celebration and yet sadness too. Oh how much I love the first year. There is something so special about this first year of life. All the growth and changes, all the the pleasure of bringing a new life into our family. Totally something to celebrate. And yet it goes so fast, too fast for me. My sweet baby is a walking, “talking”, dancing, TODDLER.

It’s definitely a year worth celebrating and celebrating big. And we did! I think Baby Boy loved the attention, a week of celebrating, starting with the cake smash and ending with two parties in a row! Thankfully he held off getting sick until after his birthday week! In the end I can’t believe my baby boy is 1!

I actually went through a few themes before setting on Cake Mix and Sprinkles. It was SUCH a fun party to put together and throw.  I’ll save those other themes for another party in the future! Once I settled on Rainbow Sprinkles and started planning the food I quickly added Cake batter to the theme and it fell perfectly into place!

In fact there are about half a dozen recipes I planned on making and DIDN’T get to! I found cake batter recipes for cream cheese frosting, sugar cookies, blondies, a BAKED cheesecake, milkshakes, even pancakes (although I never considered adding pancakes to the party)!

A fun addition to the party was the pictures of the cake smash (from the week before- thank you again to my AMAZINGLY talented sister- Chelsea Peterson Photography) in the window frame. Seriously, he rocked his photoshoot! It was ideally going to hang up behind the cake the whole time, but it ended up too heavy so we just sat it down on the table (better then smashing the cake, right?).

I always OVER plan for my parties. Not everything gets done (like EVER), but once the party starts you let it all go and have fun! I think that’s an important part of Event planning. Enjoying the event itself. I enjoy every part of party planning. The planning, the work and especially the event itself. Whats the point of all the work if your going to be miserable, anxious and stressed the entire event??

One of those things I didn’t get too was a few of the decorations, but it looked great anyway! I did end up updating my 30 image picture frame with pictures from his first year of life at the family party the next day, and I’m enjoying looking at it in my office now! Everyone had a ball and the things that didn’t get done weren’t missed at all! In fact no one will ever know but me.

I had a few activities/crafts ready to go, but the weather was so beautiful, the kids were all getting along so well, we ended up just chatting, eating and relaxing! It was a great party, I can’t imagine it going any better! I love just getting to sit, enjoy good company (great food) and relax, especially after 3 days of straight birthday party work (totally fun and totally worth it)!

I went with clear glass for decorating rather than my usual white, simply because it was easier to see all the color with the clear plates. Then the BIG question these days: to label or not to label. HA! I took pictures both ways. In the end I left them on the table because the fudge and marshmallows looked so much alike, and the truffles looked like cake pops! So I have labels if you want them. What do you think? too much, or necessary?

For the favors I shared all the recipes I used in a booklet along with a jar of sprinkles and a bag of cake mix! Kind of like a starter kit. I’ve shared all the recipes here on the blog too (see below for all the links). Some I got from other amazing bloggers (credit linked up), some were simple twists on my own recipes.

Baby Boy been my date to all the blogging conferences, parties, GNO’s all year, and even before (I went to a lot of events pregnant!). So we actually ended up inviting blogging friends to the first, BIG party, then we had a small family party a few days later (I made PLENTY of food for both parties)!

In addition to all the fun party food I also had “normal” food for lunch,.as much as I love cake mix and sprinkles I can’t eat an entire meal of it… OKAY, I totally can, but I didn’t want my guests to feel they had to!

It was really fun to watch Baby Boy interact with the other kids. He loves other babies, and it was fun watching him interact with a sweet little boy just a year older. He’s at that adorable copy cat stage, and he was enthralled by his new friend and followed his lead everywhere, including sitting/laying/sharing/eating, doing everything his new “older” friend was doing! ADORABLE!

PDF party labels

Don’t forget to check out the rest of the party details and get all the recipes!