Sophie's 1st birthday - wild animals - February 2013

The theme for Sophie's first birthday was an easy one. We hadn't found out gender while I was pregnant, so I had chosen a neutral theme of wild animals for the nursery.

I had lots of fun selecting and making food for this theme...



Watermelon hedgehog

Wild animals among the food

Lion mini pizzas



Monkey cupcakes

Slithery snake sandwich



The snake ran the length of the food table

What would a wild animal party be like without jungle juice? Scattered on the drinks  and food tables, I also had printed (animal) jokes, with the same animal banner at the bottom of each card.

I also made giraffe jelly - yellow jelly with brown circles scattered around (using cups to hold the spaces while the yellow set. I spent a LOT of time making the food for this party, and thankfully had lots of help from my sister and parents, but I learned a lot about what I was capable of doing in a day!

We didn't do too much in the way of décor, but what's a good party without party hats? ;) I made these myself, by designing and printing the animal pattern onto coloured paper (yellow for giraffe, orange for tiger and white for zebra), cutting and stapling each into a hat shape and then adding coloured fluff at the bottom and elastic to hold it on.

 

One of the tricky things with this birthday party was that Sophie was intolerant of dairy and eggs (projectile vomiting and itchy excema with dairy, hives and swelling with eggs), so I had to keep the food safe for her. The only food we had to keep away from her was the lion mini-pizzas, everything else (including the cake) was dairy- and egg-free.



The first themed cake I ever made :)

 I made the fondant figurines a couple of weeks before, and it was such a hot day that the elephant didn't make it onto the cake, and the poor giraffe's legs were a bit wobbly. I layered plain vanilla and black-coloured vanilla cake batter inside, to make a zebra stripe effect.

I had a shirt printed for her that said "1st birthday girl" - I designed it and took a white shirt to our local photo shop to have it printed. The tutu was a gift from my cousin in the UK.

 

Playing games with Daddy and Uncle Jacques

About to blow out candles with mommy
 

Photographs were taken by Dear Chloe Photography