Ella's First Birthday Party

It's been a week or so now since Ella's First Birthday took place, so I thought I would do a blog post to share all the little details. I may have gone a tad overboard considering Ella really had no idea what was going on but I consider First Birthday's to be very special and there was no way I wasn't going to make an effort for our beautiful first born - besides, I love decorating, styling and planning so why wouldn't I go OTT?

The theme

I decided to go with an understated woodland creatures theme with accents of gold and pink - to girly it up a little. 

The decorations

I purchased a DIY tassel garland from Etsy (seller was Pomtree) in soft pinks, golds and neutrals. I put it together myself - which was fairly straight wall and hung it above each table.

I hired a wooden tree trunk, to put the cake on, a few mossy rocks and some rustic wooden crates from Centerpiece party hire - which I turned upside down and displayed some party food on.

I also bought two metres of hessian printed with a gold leaf from Spotlight (on sale at the time) to use as a table cloth - fitting in with the gold theme.

I found some cute little woodland creatures (they're actually little battery operated lights) a squirrel, an owl and a hedgehog.

I did a bit of DIY on some plain wooden letters - to spell out the "ONE" - and covered them with pretty patterned paper and I also bought some faux green moss from florabunda, which I put around the table to make it look more "earthy".

The food

I didn't want to do a full on lunch, the party was from 2pm - 4.30pm, so I just put on an afternoon tea of sorts.

With the help of my family, we made chocolate mousse in little cups, a fruit platter, a cheese and cracker platter, oreos dipped in chocolate in 100's and 1000's. I made little meringue and hershey kisses "acorns, cupcakes and your standard sausage rolls, cheerio sausages, chips with dip, peanuts. To keep the kids entertained I bought a big tub of ice cream and served it in bowls with different toppings - it was a hit!

For drinks, I had the standard soft drinks on offer as well as filling these cute little drinks dispensers with juice and water (got these from Kmart). All the pink plastic plates, bowls, cups, straws and serviettes were from one of my favourite stores - the Look Sharp Store! For the life of me I can't remember where I purchased the glittery gold deer, but I got them a few Christmas' ago and thought I would utilise them for the party. All the balloons were also purchased from Look Sharp - that place is like a treasure trove!

The Cake!

One of my most favourite things of the decor and my most time consuming! I made the cake to look like a tree stump, using different colours of fondant. The baking of the cake, itself, took the most time - to get the height it took three cake batters, which I baked in five different tins and tinted five different shades of pink. The decorating of the cake didn't actually take all that long, but it was rather difficult trying to contend with buttercream icing and humidity - not a good combination!

I'm so happy how it turned out though - better than I expected - I feel like this is one of my best cakes yet. The figurines, flowers and mushrooms were all made from gumpaste (which holds it's shape better than soft fondant) and I also made the cake bunting myself, using little bunting flags, string and hessian bows from The Warehouse.

Ella seemed to enjoy the cake too! She downed an adult sized piece in one sitting.

The birthday girl!

She looked super cute in the outfit I chose for her! The tutu and shoes were from Cotton on kids and the headband was from an Etsy store - she actually managed to keep it on for the duration of the party!

We had such a great day! It was so nice to be surrounded by our closest friends and family as we celebrated our baby's first year of life. Everything went according to plan - even the weather played up for the day! It was great to catch up with our friends, eat some food and have a few laughs, everyone was so very generous - Ella was so spoilt and we feel very blessed!