Just over a month ago Elijah had his first birthday. His birthday fell on the long weekend so we planned his party for the following weekend as not everyone was going to be around. This was quite fortunate as he had a terrible cold on his actual birthday and there aren’t many good photos of him!

I don’t believe children need a lot of presents and we tried to keep them to a minimum for his 1st. I made him a winter quilt with matching cushions for the cot using a panel, and  a texta roll and art smock to go with the easel we bought him as his ‘big’ present.

I’m no cake decorator so his Birthday cake consisted of a packet mix mudcake with some smartie decorations! It was quite cheerful and tasted delicious.

The following weekend we hosted his birthday party at home. I chose a woodland theme and got a bit carried away with DIY which left me in a bit of a stress in the lead up but it was all good on the day.

For the cake I made two dozen cupcakes which were piped with buttercream. The toadstools have white buttercream ‘dots’ piped on and the rest have green chocolate leaves. The cake itself is a mudcake covered in chocolate buttercream with crushed flake around the edge. The bumps on top are chocolate acorns. The animals are scrapbook paper stuck to toothpicks which was a really quick way to add to the theme without going to too much trouble. My dad cut me some wood slices from a tree they’d had to cut down a few weeks prior and I was so pleased with how the looked on the day. I also tried my hand at gumpaste modeling; if you look closely you can see little toadstools sitting on the sliced wood.

The rest of the food didn’t really have a woodland theme, so we served it up on sliced wood platters to tie it all in. In the top right photo you can see a glass bowl of lollies; I managed to get those quite ‘woodlandy’ by using bullets, raspberries, left over leaves and acorns, plus these mushroom lollies you can pick up in Coles.

As decorations I made some bunting and animal appliques in embroidery hoops which hung behind the table. None of the photos I took really show them well though.

Lastly; another picture of the cake! I was very proud!