Jude's First Birthday Party

Well, all of our work paid off!

Jude's Birthday Party came and went and it was a great time!

We had (more than) enough food, drinks, cakes, etc.

We were going for a pretty laid back event and I'm pretty sure that was successful. Everyone showed up right around 2:00. Everyone hung out, ate and mingled for awhile and then I decided to do cake.

We had bought a cake for the guests to eat and since I wanted to make a cake for Jude, I made a special one for him.

This was the cake for the guests:

it was a Doctor Seuss theme and looked AWESOME! I loved it! I let Cannon's pretty much design it on their own and I'm so happy I did!

They put little blurbs from different books...

Jude's cake was a banana cake. I used all vegan ingredients (from a vegan cookbook) so that my dear friend Meghan could indulge in Jude's first Birthday cake. Jude loved it! I changed the recipe just a little, but it turned out well (I took some ingredients out, added some extra of another and used a different frosting than they called for).

Everyone gathered in the front yard to sing happy birthday.... so the candle barely stayed aflame.

We opted out of the big "open presents in front of everyone thing". Instead, as most people were leaving, I gave Jude his gifts and opened the cards myself. He only got a handful of toys and played with them all.

Jude's mom-mom (my mom) made him his first birthday shirt

He looked so cute in his little hat!

We had ooddles of food - and Ryan played grill master... and then turned it over to Curt. Speaking of food, I made a Strawberry layer cheesecake thing as my final 'seasonal dessert'! I got the recipe from Barbie. Of course I can't just make it as indicated, so I changed it a bit. I had it at a mom's night and personally thought it could use more strawberries and pound cake, so I got about double the pound cake and easily double the strawberries. I started with the whipped cream bottom, strawberries and pound cake, then did the whipped cream, more pound cake and the rest of the strawberries. The melted chocolate over the strawberries was oh-so-yummy. The dish was gone in minutes!

But back to the birthday... Jude didn't get strawberry cheesecake... instead he got some of the fruit salad.

All in all, it was a great day! The weather was wonderful and the friends were just as lovely.

After just about everyone cleared out, Ryan started up a fire pit and we sat around and hung out for the evening. After a long day, Jude slept like a champ.