Annie's 1st Birthday Party - Prep, Food & Decor

Settle in, folks - this is sure to be a doozy. I debated separating this into more than 2 posts, but I figure people know how to save a post to read it later if it gets too long :) This first one will be about the preparation for the party, the food and decor, and the next will be photos from the main event! We had the party at my parents' house, since we ended up inviting about 40 adults (and that is JUST immediate families and close friends! Ben has too many siblings ;) and our house is tiny. I'm so glad they let us have the party there - lots more space to socialize, and decorate :)

The birthday girl!

The party went better than I could have hoped! This may be my only chance to shamelessly throw myself a party with no input from Annie, so I started thinking about it about 3 months ago. I made myself a Google Doc to store ideas so I wouldn't forget where I found things. There were a few parties I LOVED, but knew I wouldn't be able to pull of without some significant help from graphic designers or professional bakers, which doesn't exactly come cheap. Then, the craziness of December happened, and all the sudden it was nearly a month before the big day, and I knew I had to get busy with ordering invitations.

You all know my love for Shutterfly. When I was browsing the birthday invitations, I found this one with a spot for monthly photos AND a cupcake on it, which is one of my most favorite desserts and what I was planning on baking anyway. So I was quickly sold, and decided to not really have a theme and just keep it cutesy with some cupcake things and lots of pink - pretty easy to do! Shutterfly also got me at the end of the order by suggesting a coordinating return address label - how could I turn that down?!

After figuring out the invitations, I searched a few other websites to find more ideas for parties, and came across this awesome first birthday party. From that, I got a ton of ideas that I ended up using. I thought the poms looked awesome, and after chatting with my sister about how I was possibly going to have time to do all of the things I wanted to do, she graciously offered to make the poms whilst watching bad TV - score! Without her, there would have been no poms, and the party would have sucked :) She used these instructions and said they were not too difficult.

They worked even better than balloons by the front door!

A few in the entry way

and in the little hallway to the kitchen

I also brought 2 photos, taken by Kate, that are hanging in the nursery to hang above the desserts

Hung from the ceiling using fishing line and masking tape - only 2 fell, but stayed up after we added more tape

The other idea that party gave me was doing a photo gallery wall. You all have obviously seen Annie's weekly pics - I knew I needed to do SOMETHING with them! I considered putting them all in a book, but this gallery seemed to be the perfect way to display all 52 photos somewhat easily. I followed the above link's instructions loosely - Liz and I went to Anchor Paper (the site of the famed placecards from her wedding) a few weeks ago, and we picked out dark pink, light pink, and bright teal/aqua cardstock that would match the poms. We used their paper cutting room to cut out cardstock to frame each 4x6 photo. I wasn't exact about this at all - I just stuck 2 photos to each sheet and used their paper cutter to cut approximately 1/4 inch of a border around each side. It actually went way faster than I thought, and only took about an hour. I set up the rest of the gallery at my parents' house on the day of the party - it took me quite awhile but was definitely worth it! I wanted to include the 52 Weeks photo from that morning, so I settled for 1 hour glossy prints from Target, even though my preference is matte :) Rett did tell me that Ritz Photo does matte photos in 1 hour but they weren't convenient so I let it go. I added the numbers using picasa which was super easy once I noticed the "text" option staring me right in the face. I used paper raffia to string the photos, and 3M hooks to hang them up. I cut out the circles (used the inside of masking tape as a guide) and hand-wrote the 52 Weeks of Annie sign, which Ben was kind enough to color in for me :) He had some issues staying inside the lines but I don't THINK anyone noticed ;)

I browsed Michael's and Party City for some items about a month ago, and ended up buying Annie's party hat (that I forgot to have her wear at the party, but clearly based on her pic in the 12 months post that probably was a good idea :) and some candles at Party City. I got ribbon, treat bags and the paper raffia at Michael's. All of the rest of the plates, cups, etc was just from Target. I ended up hitting the jackpot in the dollar section, with cupcake spoon holders, pink tins and pink sprinkles since they had all their Valentine's Day stuff out. I also got all the favors for the kiddos at the party from the Target dollar aisle or baby clearance section. I made a little bag for each baby/child with age appropriate things for them - they were a lot of fun to put together, and I was shocked at all the awesome stuff that can be found in the dollar aisle!

My dining room table the night before the party

On top of everything else, I knew there was no way I was going to have the time or energy to make a birthday banner myself - I saw Melissa's posts about her baby's 1st birthday party over at Dear Baby, and loved the birthday banner they used, from Bekah Jennings at Etsy. I love that it's gender neutral and can be used over and over again!

I've seen Royal Icing tutorials all around the interwebs, and have been intrigued by them. When I was buying some cupcake liners from Bake it Pretty, I also saw they had a cupcake cookie cutter. I bought it, and since Kate had offered to help with the party, I asked her if she'd be willing to give royal icing a try. She came over one night last week, and we got to work - it took us the better part of the evening to outline and flood all the cookies, but it went pretty well. My pink turned out a little garish, but live and learn I guess! I did the detail work the next day. This was a bit time intensive for my tastes but I thought they were so cute. I used some frozen sugar cookie dough I had left from Christmas, and also made a batch of these lemon vanilla bean sugar cookies from Annie's Eats. I was pleasantly surprised by how good the cookies tasted - the royal icing smelled kind of ick when we were decorating, but it tasted fine, and the cookie actually tasted pretty good considering how long it had to sit out to be decorated and for the icing to dry. I should have put these by the door somehow, because I don't think everyone took a cookie, as my sign directed :) I had a lot of fun decorating and am excited for my next opportunity to try royal icing again! When's the next baby shower??!

Now, on to the food. I really focused on the desserts, but because the party was from 4-7 I knew we needed to serve dinner in an easy and economical way. I took a page from Scottoberfest's book and went with chili because it's easy and generally well liked. Ben already has a chicken and black bean chili he makes frequently, and we had just tried a beef chili recipe that was great. He prepped two double batches of both of those chilis a week before the party, and we froze it all prior to the step of putting it in the crockpot. We had approximately 32 large ladles full of chili, so we needed another batch to ensure we had enough food for everyone. Since there were no vegetarians that had RSVPed, we went with another chicken chili for the final batch - I turned to my standby, Annie's Eats, for a white bean chicken chili recipe - we doubled it and it was super easy and apparently many people loved it! We only had leftovers of the beef chili, which my sister has been enjoying all week :) My mother-in-law graciously offered to make bread, and then we also put out squeezable sour cream (another tip from Janelle after years of serving chili - that is much easier to manage than everyone spooning out of a tub!) and a big bowl of cheese and we were good to go with the main course. I also had fritos and tortilla chips for people who enjoy those with their chili. The only thing missing was cornbread, but maybe I'm the only one that's obsessed with having cornbread with my chili - I barely got to eat so it wasn't an issue :) My mom got a few other appetizers (veggie tray, crackers and cheese) and we were set for food. As far as I know, no one went hungry.

You can see some of the food here - the chilis were in 3 crockpots to the right of this photo

A common theme for 1st birthday parties is Winter ONEderland, which I briefly considered. In several of those parties, I have seen hot chocolate bars, which I thought sounded kind of fun for a cold January day, and not too difficult. I took the easiest route possible, and got hot chocolate mix from the grocery store, some whipped cream, and had Ben pick up Bailey's and Peppermint and Vanilla Schnapps. Of course I did have to make it more difficult by making homemade marshmallows again, but this time that step was made 1000x easier because of my beloved stand mixer. Once again, I used this recipe from Erin's Food Files and it worked out perfectly. I'm not sure how many people actually took advantage of the hot chocolate bar because I wasn't good about selling it and telling people about it, but I know some did. My coworkers are certainly enjoying the leftover marshmallows, as am I with my nightly cocoa fixes.

Now, finally on to the most important part of any first birthday party - the cake! I thought pink cupcakes would be awesome - I originally thought about doing strawberry cupcakes, but when my searches came upon these pink velvet cupcakes, I knew it was fate. These were PERFECT! I've made red velvet cake before so I wasn't intimidated, and I was already familiar with Erin's blog since I've been reading it for a few years and trust that the recipes she posts will turn out. I also wanted some more "normal" cupcakes, so I went with a classic vanilla bean cupcake from Annie's Eats, and made Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate frosting to ice them. The icing was WAY too stiff when I went to frost the cupcakes (it had sat overnight) so I did end up having to add more milk, but it ended up perfect and received rave reviews. I had about twice as many vanilla cupcakes as I did pink velvet, so the pink ones went fast, but again, my coworkers have definitely enjoyed the leftovers :) I only got to try a few crumbs of the pink velvet, but let me tell you, Annie was definitely a fan as she devoured an entire cupcake herself. I loved the vanilla bean - the batter was really pretty with the flecks of vanilla bean, and it tasted perfect.

They sure are pink :)

Pretty batter

I was a little disappointed that these cupcake liners weren't more opaque, after I had read they were the best for maintaining their color after baking, so double up if you want a really opaque look, as you can see with the middle cupcake here

A few short notes about planning this shebang before I close this massive post. I was really overwhelmed thinking about this party, so I did make a conscious effort to do as much ahead of time as I could. I knew I'd need to spend the weekend of baking the cupcakes, so I needed to do as much in advance as I could. The weekend before the party, Ben made the chili and I cut out the paper for the photo garland. I spaced out the rest of the things I could do in the evenings over the course of the week so no one day was too overwhelming and made sure to not make any plans that week. The worst was probably Saturday with baking the cupcakes and making the frostings and marshmallows, but even that wasn't too bad, even without a dishwasher :)

Tomorrow I will post more photos from the event itself!