Four Years of Birthdays - a look back

I thought it would be cool to go back through the past four years to see how my party style is evolving. I am a catering manager by trade and I love cooking and entertaining, so people expect a good party. I have received some good feedback about the last birthday party. Someone even said it was like a wedding :)

For A's first birthday party we had an Elmo theme. Not sure why...maybe it just seemed very one year old friendly. I made fondant from scratch and I learned how to frost cupcakes. We had tons of people and tons of food since it was a celebration for both my husband and daughter. I was only working part time at the time so I had lots more time to bake and cook.

I can't believe how little she was!

First Cupcake Ever!

I think somewhere between her first and second birthday I made cupcakes for my friend's baby shower. She had a rubber ducky theme and it was smack in the middle of summer. I made fondant rubber duckies and they were cute and tasty. Unfortunately, it was a homemade butter cream disaster. The frosting melted and it started to slide off of the cupcakes :( 

We had her second birthday party at Pump It Up and she picked a Kai Lan theme. It was her favorite cartoon. I was back to working full time again and I am not sure what possessed me to make Kai Lan, Hoho and Mr Sun Cupcakes. I was running so late! My brother, the artist, had to bail me out. This year I learned how to follow directions  on the iron on and it turned out better.
I think I am through with DIY character cupcakes. I was going to make the kids Kai Lan favor bags with bags leftover from party #1 but as it turned out they were not cloth. I tried to put an iron on transfer on them and they melted. I used take out boxes instead and they worked out much better.

The Third Birthday party took place at  an  Interpretive Center and we had a Finding Nemo theme. I gave up on the funky cupcakes and  got into paper crafting. I just bought my Cricut Expression and I put together a bunch of characters. Again, my brother came to the rescue.

My brother with my monkey.

This year we went to the other nature center in Hayward. I started preparing for this party back in December.  My brother still kind of helped with this event. I made him cut out all of the letters for the birthday banner and stick labels on water bottles. Unlike the one from last year, I only had 30 minutes to set up for the party. Talk about stressful, since I had no idea what to do about my backdrop or banners and some guests came early (I put them to work ). Everything turned out great and you can read about it here and here.

 Not sure what we are going to do next year. My husband mentioned Pump It Up so I can't go more over the top. We will see!