1st Birthday Party

On Saturday we had a combined birthday party with our friends, the Fischlis. Their daughter was born 1 hour after Claire. So we decided to celebrate together because we would have invited the same people to both parties anyway.

We went with a watermelon theme for the end of summer.

Pictures courtesy of our friend Amy who kindly agreed to be party photographer! (Thanks, again!)

Everything was pink, red, and green. And we used watermelon wherever we could. The cupcakes and Jello were actually strawberry though because watermelon Jello is apparently not to be found in San Jose. The decor was SO cute, but true to style, I completely underestimated the time and effort involved!

Everything turned out really well: the cupcakes (strawberry), the cake balls (strawberry), the melon ball salad, the pigs in a blanket, the caprese salad on a stick, and the watermelon raspberry lemonade inside of the watermelon rind. But not the adorable Jello wedges. We used Pinterest for a lot of the ideas, and in the case of the Jello, Pinterest failed miserably.

Because there was an entire party to plan, I made the jello "shots" the night before. Peter and I painstakingly pitted the limes. Getting the pulp out wasn't the hard part, but getting the skin out was really hard. I didn't think it'd be as attractive with the skin bits floating in the Jello, so I pulled it out. I filled each half with the Jello then put it in the fridge. The limes didn't sit very evenly, so the jello didn't set perfectly. No big deal though. After about an hour I tried one of the limes to make sure it turned out alright. At 10pm Friday night, they were fine. A little limey, but still strawberry jello tasting. By 11:30am the next day they were disgusting!!! Any strawberry flavor was gone. The jello was bitter and inedible. They looked awesome though. So if you choose to put jello inside of a citrus rind, pour the jello within 2 hours of serving. No longer!

The cake balls were perfect! Strawberry cake + frosting. Yum. Roll into balls with some mini chocolate chips. The mini chocolate chips were for seeds. Then we dipped them in white and green dipping chocolate. I had never used sticks before but will definitely be using them every time hereafter. They make dipping so much easier!

Christine made the banners with the girls's names on them. Super cute! She also carved out the watermelon for the drink (also a Pinterest find). The drink turned out REALLY good. Watermelon puree + raspberry lemonade concentrate.

Peter made the cupcake stand. I cut out cardboard circles (8, 10, and 12 inches), and Peter covered them with pink plastic table cloth. We used cans from the pantry covered in ribbon as the center stands.

So that's the party set-up.

Now on to the birthday girls.

I made Claire a tutu for her birthday outfit. It was super cute! I'm very proud of it.

Boys being boys. Very manly.

The girls were a little wary of the cupcakes at first, but it didn't take long for them to figure out that cupcakes are tasty treats!

We forgot to bring the tray portion of Claire's high chair, so I had to hold the cupcake. No real smashing action here.