Happy Birthday Cooper!

My baby is one year old!  This year has gone by much too fast!  If I could push a repeat button, I would in a heartbeat!  It's been wonderful!  I'm going to miss the baby stage!  Though... I will be happy to start sleeping through the night- any day, Cooper- I'm ready, sleeping through the night is a good thing...  Cooper is such a happy little one and is learning so much everyday!  I could go on and on, but I'll spare you!  To celebrate we had a Winter Onederland Party at our house!  Here are some pictures, enjoy!

 Preparations

Cooper loved the balloons!  Here he's actually blowing- trying to help the process!

Here's Brett doing his part!  He was in charge of the fruit cutting, making PBJs and snowflake shaped cheese! 

Evan was the official frosting taster...he approved.

Decorations:

Yummy food:

We tried to keep the food pretty simple!  The standard veggies and dip, blue chips and hummus, cheese and crackers for appetizers.   We had White Chicken Chili and rolls for our main course.  For the kids we had 'snow covered fruit' (aka yogurt parfaits), pbjs, and fruit.  We had a hot cocoa bar for drinks.  Then for the sweets....  sugar cookies, chocolate cupcakes, and apple cardamom cake (birthday cake).  I was pretty happy with the cookies- this was my first time trying to ice cookies.  The penguins took a bit of a beating while I was icing them...Cooper woke up, I had to run up and get him- leaving a 2 yr old on his little step stool in the kitchen (he was 'helping' me), well I got back down and my laptop was on top of the cookies and someone had icing on their face (though denied eating any....).  I was able to repair most, but a few were beyond help...  ah well, the cost of doing business with a 2 year old :-)

Here are the chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese icing!  I made the snowflakes ahead of time by piping white chocolate then sprinkling with sugar a little white bead. 

And here's the Birthday Cake!  This was inspired by a photo I found on Cake Central.  My snowflakes are nearly as beautiful and I went a little overboard with them, but I was still happy with it!  The snowman and the blue at the bottom are made from marshmallow fondant (pretty easy to make!).  The cake is iced with a vanilla buttercream.

 

Here's our hot cocoa station with even more sweets!

 

Birthday Boy! 

He wasn't quite sure why everyone was singing and watching him- he kept looking around, it was pretty cute!  And again, he didn't do the classic dive into the cake...but I think he enjoyed it!  Certainly the most sugar he's ever had!

He partied until he literally dropped.

Favors for our friends, Snowman Kits!  I used a tutorial from Make It Do for the hat, which was great and turned out to be pretty easy!  I ended up making 18 in total, 15 for the party and a few extras for Christmas gifts for next year.  The kits included the hat, scarf, and a bag of bits and pieces (carrot nose, buttons, rocks for the eyes and mouth).  All together, these were a bit of work, just because of the quantity, but fun and I have awesome friends, so totally worth the effort!