This past Saturday Isabelle turned ONE! And we had a fabulous time celebrating this little lady.

It is so hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that an entire year has passed since we first met our sweet girl. No doubt, it was the fastest year of my entire life. Ahhh those newborn snuggles are just the best, aren’t they? But then those itsy bitsy babies grow and start to giggle, develop a sense of humor, start to explore the world, and it’s just amazing to watch.

Isabelle loves nothing more than to be wherever her brothers are, trying to keep up with them. She is super sweet, loves to give little snuggles, and has the best wave. We loved throwing her party and celebrating with our family.

Now, let’s chat about the party!

The Decorations

Isabelle isn’t “into” anything really yet, so I went with a simple pink and gold color theme for the party.

I snatched up a Happy 1st Birthday banner and the plates and napkins from Party City (everyone LOVED the plates – they were heavy duty plastic vs paper), as well as the photo garland that I used to display pictures of Isabelle from each month for the last year (ahhhhh, I can’t believe how little she was such a short time ago!).

Since there is a massive helium shortage (which I didn’t know about until I tried to place a balloon order!), Party City didn’t have any, so I got our balloons (an assortment of light and dark pink) from our local grocery store’s floral department.

[source: dinner plates / dessert plates / napkins / banner / photo garland]

The Food

Since I wasn’t going crazy with elaborate fondant cakes this time around, I decided to do a homemade menu instead of getting food catered, with one exception. My mom, sister, mother-in-law and grandma all pitched in, as well! This is what we had:

  • Toasted baguette with cheese and peach pepper jelly
  • Veggie tray
  • Bowls of chips and pretzels
  • Baked ziti
  • Fried chicken from a local deli
  • Tossed salad
  • Roasted red potatoes

The Cake(s)

Since it was Isabelle’s 1st birthday, she got a smash cake in addition to the regular cake we all ate, as well!

For the big cake, I did a two-layer chocolate cake that was filled with vanilla buttercream, then did an ombre-style pink frosting that I decorated using a Wilton 1M decorating tip (see tutorial here).

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For Isabelle’s smash cake, I made a 6-inch yellow cake that I decorated with two-toned pink roses using Sally’s tutorial.

I couldn’t believe how absolutely gentle and DELICATE Isabelle was with her smash cake – she’d calmly dip a couple fingers in, lick the icing off, then do it again, nice and slowly. It was so adorable!

In case you’re curious, to fill, crumb coat, and decorate both cakes, I needed FIVE batches of my favorite vanilla buttercream!

[sources: gel food coloring / ‘one’ cake topper]

Extras

I ordered the invitations from Etsy and finally got smart and ordered them PRINTED with envelopes included, which made addressing and mailing super easy (as opposed to the digital file that requires me to get them printed somewhere, find envelopes that fit, etc.)

I also got Isabelle’s outfit on Etsy… I wanted to keep with the pink and gold theme and just could not resist this adorable outfit!

A Few More Pictures For You :)