Well, my daughter's first birthday has come and gone.  I've been kind of MIA while planning for that and a surprise baby shower I was throwing for a friend of mine.  My party planning days are done until Thanksgiving!

Everything went very, very well.  For the baby shower we didn't know the gender so we did a beachy theme.  I used sand buckets for the chips and shovels to scoop them out with.  I put a beach towel down as a runner and decorated with random sand toys.  The cake (not made by me) was simple but oh-so-yummy yellow cupcakes with white icing and crushed graham crackers sprinkled on top to look like sand.  She also used a sand castle mold and packed it full of vanilla ice cream and then turned it out onto the platter and sprinkled it with crushed graham crackers too.  Sorry I didn't manage to get any pictures with my own camera.  I'll have to hound my friend to send me the ones we took with hers.

On the menu was:
Seven Layer Dip
Lindsay's Dip (My friend Lindsay always makes it so I worked hard to come up with the name)
Pillsbury Savorings
Watermelon Baby Carriage (prepared by my hubby)
Punch

Now on to the birthday girl's party!

A girlfriend of mine convinced me that I COULD make her cake myself rather than buying one at the store so I did...  I stressed over that more than anything for the party and it really turned out cute!  I was very surprised with myself.

Smash Cake

Party Cake

 I had another good friend that loaned me some decorating bags, icing tint, and tips and I made the icing from scratch.  The cake was just a boxed yellow cake mix.  I printed out a butterfly in the size that I needed from clipart and cut it out.  Then laid it on the cake and traced the outline with a toothpick and then filled it in with a start tip - Wilton cake decorating 101 style.

For the food I wanted to go simple because I knew I was going to be so stressed about the cake because I tend to be a teeny bit of a perfectionist.  So we had a nacho bar and I just had all the fixin's laid out in the kitchen.  For the little kids I made cheese quesadillas.

For the guest of honor's attire I made a tutu to match the 'birthday girl' shirt that my girlfriend bought for her.  I was inspired by Busy Working Mama when she made a tutu for her daughter.  I used these instructions and it was a SUPER easy task that received lots of compliments.

Modeled by a left over baby shower bucket.

Modeled by the Birthday Girl!

We had a great time with our family and friends at the party and everything went over very well.  My daughter even played in the cake!!  I couldn't have asked for anything to be any better.