Balloon Birthday Bash

Yes we gave our one-year-old a birthday party and yes we know he won't ever remember but we will. Parties are fun and I had fun planning my child's first birthday party. My little guy loves balloons so we decided to give him an overload of balloons for his party.

Theme: Balloons

Invitation: Evite-it's free!

Decorations: Helium balloons and a balloon garland around our apartment. I got the garland idea from Martha Stewart's website.
My husband set-up a balloon screen saver on our TV/computer.

Activities: "UP" play fort, toys, and bubbles.
Bean Bag Toss. Box-diaper box, wrapping paper, construction paper. Bean bags-old jeans, left over fabric, pinto beans.

Treats: We did kid snacks, and adult snacks and tried to find puffy, circular things like quiche, creme puffs, jalapeno poppers, lil crunchers, watermelon balls etc.

Cake: When we were brainstorming balloon cake ideas I remembered that one of my roommates from college recently made an "UP" cake for her daughter. We totally stole her idea. The big difference is she does cake decorating and we do NOT. However, my cute hubby was the chief architect and he did awesome!

First I baked three cakes on Thursday night and froze them in the freezer. I found some helpful cake tips here on the website Make it and Love it. Friday night Mike used an electric turkey carver to cut the cake and he began creating using butter cream frosting to glue it together.
I made fondant to use for the roof, windows, door, and bushes. I also found my recipe for fondant on Make it and Love it. The recipe and directions are here. I used 3 tablespoons of water and I live in a humid climate. It worked much better than 2 tablespoons which is the suggested starting point. After the cake was finished on Saturday we used a kabob skewer to hold the balloons in place. See below for our end result.
In the end the cake was destroyed by the birthday boy. A proper ending to a 1st year birthday cake.

Of course we couldn't let our guests eat this cake so I made some cupcakes. I topped with mentos and teddy grahams.

Party Favors: Balloon, Bubbles, and lollipops. However, in the shuffle of things only about half of the kids and parents got their parting gifts. Sigh.

Lots of leftover balloons!

Thanks to all our guests who came. You were adorable!