Eleanor’s First Birthday Party

We celebrated Eleanor’s first birthday last Sunday. There were plenty of paper daisies (I knew I’d find a use for them some day!), a happy birthday banner, pink baloons, and floral garland across the windows.

The weather even cooperated for us.

Oh look, an elephant! Too cute, right?

That vase is actually a teapot, but it’s adorable when filled with flowers.

Eleanor was a gracious host, thoughtfully opting to skip her nap so as not to miss a moment of her party.

She was in a good mood the whole time though, despite being tired toward the end.

I ordered a cake for the party, but I asked for it to be left completely plain with just pale pink frosting. I wanted it to be a blank canvas, but the bakery apparently thought that I meant “smash a bunch of crumbs all around the edge, and pipe some frosting shapes as a border around the whole cake”. Oh well. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with it anyway; I just knew I wanted to decorate it myself.

I made Eleanor’s silhouette out of chocolate for the cake. I melted chocolate chips in a sandwich bag, snipped the end, then laid parchment paper over a template that I had printed out to size. I did the best I could, piping the outline first and then filling it in, and I placed it in the fridge afterward to harden. I also wrote “Happy Birthday Eleanor” in white, lightly scratching the letters in the frosting with a toothpick first as a guide. The cake was not perfect, but it was fine. The guest of honor seemed to like it quite a bit.