Our Little Honey Bun's 1st Birthday Celebration!

Here are the sweet and short details of the party:
Theme: Mustache
Guests: Friends and Family (and lots of babies!)
Activities: Food, Cake Smash, Photobooth, Baby Play, Iron Chef Competition, Trivia.

I'd like to start out by saying that I have a love and hate relationship with Pinterest. I love Pinterest because I was able to find (quickly), lots of cute ideas for his party. I hate Pinterest because I found LOTS of cute ideas that I wanted to do for his party. Looking back, I may have gone a bit crazy with the mustache theme, but it was worth the hard work, it was fun, and the little one really enjoyed it.

Here are a few pictures of the details of the decor:

I piped each of these chocolate mustaches to top the cupcakes. They were actually really fun to make.

Steve printed out a mustache cookie cutter on his 3D printer. I made a maple sugar cookie and later frosted them with chocolate.


I made a banner with paper that came in a package. I first stamped the paper with mustache stamps, cut the pennants out and then glued letters that I cut out from red construction paper.

 We also had a ghetto photo booth set up in the game room. We provided props (by the end of the night, somehow many of Nathan's toys from his room ended up in the pile) and I used a photo booth app, my kindle and a music stand to set up the photo booth.

Here is the background that I created. The balloons are tied onto a pool stick that's behind the sofa.

Here are a few pictures from the photo booth. 

My niece, Grace, really liked the photo booth. About 30% of the pictures were of her.

The food spread. Pringles, Veggies with 2 types of homemade dip, baguettes with a roasted eggplant and bell pepper spread, Goat Tea Sandwiches (Goat Cheese, olive tapenade, and greens), pulled pork sandwiches with a creamy kale slaw. Not pictured: Pom Selleck cocktail drink. Pomegranate juice, Pom liqueur, triple sec, white rum, seltzer water.

I went ahead and made 2 types of cupcakes. Carrot cake and chocolate cake. On the bottom of the chocolate cake I put either regular or mint oreos. The frosting was a cream cheese frosting. You can kind of see the frosted mustache cookies to the right of the cakes.

As people entered the door, they were welcome to pick a mustache. I'd say about half of the guests started out with staches, but as the day went on, they started to disappear. I ended up taking mine off after 2 hours.

In preparing for the party, I had this silly notion/idea in my head that I needed to create this awesome Pinterest-worthy party for my son. All of my boards and pins caused me to forget about what was most important: celebrating surviving the first year with our family and friends. Despite the fact that the party may not have been exactly Pinterest-worthy, I had a blast! A big part of it was because of my sister and her boyfriend helped us out tremendously. They worked behind the scenes and put the final touches on the party while I was able to visit and really spend time with our guests.

Here are just a few of the babies that attended. We also had a few older kids. It was crazy! Boom, waaa, giggle, squeal, were the sounds of the house.

The most amazing part was this moment. Nathan sat on the dinner table while all the guests surrounded the table. We started to sing Happy Birthday.

 Suddenly, he perks up, looks around and gets this hey, they're singing to me! look on his face. Thinking back now, I realized that during those few moments, like in a movie, the singing faded, the people disappeared, and in front of me was the most amazing little creature. Tears came to my eyes as I looked at him and this overwhelming feeling of proud took over. It was pretty amazing. I'd have to say it is one of my top 10 favorite moments of my life.

It didn't take long for him to quickly crawl over to the cake. He cautiously approached it,

 Daintily tasted the sweet frosting,

 and then went to town. 

As baby/toddler bedtime quickly approached, the guests gradually said their goodbyes and for about 30 minutes, the house was calm. And then more people showed up for part 2 of the party.

The second set of guests all said their Happy Birthdays to Nathan and then it was bedtime for him. Twice a year, we host an Iron Chef party where people bring a dish that features a certain ingredient. In the past we've done chocolate, egg, and squash, so this time it was Oreos. We had a pretty good spread of food.

Top left: Oreo crusted bbq pork ribs. (best tasting)
Underneath: Oreo Tiramisu
Top right: Gorgonzola, pear, smoked turkey quiche with golden oreo crust and crumb.
Bottom left: Whiskey Oreo cake balls.
Above: Peanut butter/banana/oreo cheesecake cupcakes with bacon topping. (best presentation)
Bottom right: Oreo crusted beef satay with Oreo cream, coconut, chili sauce. (best overall)
Above: Savory Oreo tamales with oreo whipped cream topping. (most creative)
Not Pictured: Mint Oreo ice cream squares.

After the feast was over, we set up for a few rounds of trivia featuring famous mustaches for both visual and audio rounds, 2 rounds about cookies, 1 round on space, and then a random knowledge round.

Was I tired? Yes. Is there still a bunch of stuff to clean? Yes. Do we have a fridge full of Oreo desserts? Yes! But the laughter, food, and joy that came out of it was worth it.

So there you go. We survived the first year. (And we're responsible for at least 17 more years...)