Birthday Party for Little Loves: Garden Party Yummies

Dear Em,

This is a four part Series covering your Garden Birthday Party. You can also read about the Garden Party Invites, Garden Party Decorations, & Garden Party Favors. 

No birthday celebration would be complete without yummy treats- garden style. Actually, not all the food was garden style. Some of the food at the party was there simply because it tastes yummy & was fairly simple to make. For instance, we made calzones. They may not go with the theme, but everyone loves them.

For much of the food, we tried to have a little fun & put a garden party spin on it. We filled terracotta pots with tissue paper & put chips & other snacks in them instead of filling regular serving bowls.

Then there was dessert. The year before, your aunt & I made sunflower cupcakes. They were complete with little M&M lady bugs. Super cute, super time consuming.

I thought about making them again or making another kind of flower & tried to wrap my head around the time I was going to have to find in order to decorate flower cupcakes (I'm not a professional & decorating the cupcakes takes me forever). Then we went to another birthday party & saw the most amazing thing: a cupcake cake. From the top it looks like any other cake, but underneath the frosting it's all cupcake. You don't have to take the time to cut the cake or even find plates & forks for everyone. Where does this amazing creation come from? Stop & Shop.

I went to Stop & Shop, explained the color scheme & garden theme, & ordered the cupcake cake ahead of time. When your daddy went to pick it up, it was beautiful & exactly what I had wanted...except they had made a cake with 25 cupcakes instead of the 50 I had ordered. They remade a new one just before our guests arrived, but never gave us any type of discount for the inconvenience. In fact, your papi also bought the smaller cake. They were going to throw it away unless we bought it & your papi couldn't bear to think of it in the trash. Everything turned out cute & yummy in the end, but if I ordered a cake from Stop & Shop again I would probably confirm with them a few thousand times before the day of the party.

Your grandma jumped right into the theme & made a yummy batch of dirt. Doesn't sound appetizing? It's a fun dessert with pudding, crushed Oreos, & gummy worms. She put it in a potting plant with yellow flowers & a hand shovel as a serving spoon. Super fun, right? Also a super big hit, especially with all the little loves.

Of course, you also had to have your very first smash cake. So, when we ordered the other cake, we also ordered a small cake that was decorated similarly. We put it in front of you, sang happy birthday, & let you go for it. It was a smashing success.

Sigh, it's been so much fun reminiscing about your sweet 1.5 garden birthday party. How can it be that a whole year has already gone by? Right now we're gearing up for birthday party 2.5. We'll be celebrating on your 2.5 birthday this Saturday, & I can't wait to recap all of the fun. In some ways, we went more low-key. There is certainly much less DIY for this party (which kinda makes me sad in my heart, but we're still DIYing much of your new room so I guess it's ok), but still some super fun surprises.

I can't wait!

I love you so,

Mommy