Today I’m sharing a few photos of the strawberry theme birthday party we had on our patio for our youngest daughter on her 1st birthday.
Even though it’s been a few months since she turned 1, I’ve had a few requests since I originally shared in my IG stories to share a bit more on my blog. Disclaimer: nothing you see was expensive or by any means professional– I’m just a mom who put a few things together that I thought would look cute and we had so much fun!
I decided to have the celebration on our patio because the weather was nice and it is so much easier to contain the mess, especially with a smash cake!
For the decor, I sourced almost everything from Amazon and it all can be found in my Amazon shop.
I hung these honeycomb tissue paper strawberries from our pergola, which added a whimsical replacement to a chandelier.
The cake was my first real attempt at a multi-layer cake that is frosted, and I was aiming for simplicity. Only a handful of strawberries for the cake ‘decor’ and a single long beeswax candle.
My 9 year old is obsessed with baking shows and convinced me to attempt some cake pops. They are SO much harder to make than they look on TV (for me at least) and we had a lot of mess ups. These look pretty sloppy but they were still cute, so we used them.
Dinner consisted of take-out barbecue ribs and southern sides, but I laid the table with a variety of strawberry treats: fresh strawberries in paper berry baskets, and chocolate-dipped strawberries.
For the rest of the patio I mostly just tied little balloon groupings (I bought a helium tank and inflated them myself) at a few spots and it was the perfect pop of color and festiveness.
This little corner of our patio against the house is where we set up her high chair to sing happy birthday and smash her first cake. I strung some strawberry garlands, then tied balloons and a “one” sign on the high chair. By the back door, I taped a pennant banner over the bar cart which held our take-out dinner in picnic boxes.
We made two cakes– one that was pretty and layered that the family would eat, and a small one for her to smash. The kids decorated the small one with with red gel food coloring to write her name and after she dug into it, she ended up looking like a baby vampire! Hahaha!
Thankfully all the red frosting/food coloring came out of her “berry loved” strawberry bodysuit.
I used this recipe for the vanilla cake and frosting and used 4 small 6″ cake pans for the layers. I thought a 6″ cake would be too small, but it was actually perfect for our family of 6. The layers make a thinner slice more substantial and the jam filling made it not too sweet.
I used Bonne Maman Strawberry Preserves for the filling– nothing added. I just spread it on between each layer of cake and it was delicious.
Here is a little video montage I created of her special day:
I’m not a portrait or human photographer by any means, but I managed to get a few photos for her 1st birthday in her little strawberry theme outfit. The clothes were found from a few shops on Etsy: the dress was vintage, and the bloomers and headband were handmade (similar headband found here).
The knee-high socks were another Amazon find.
I also used Etsy to purchase and download these strawberry invites we sent to family to join us via Zoom as we sang happy birthday.
Nina is just the sweetest baby imaginable and we love this little caboose to pieces!
Hard to believe it was only a year ago that she was this tiny…
Babies don’t keep! I miss the newborn stage something fierce but I adore this 1 year-old stage of new-found independence and curiosity!
Leave a Reply