Planning Kasen's First Birthday

With Kasen's first birthday coming up shortly, it wasn't too early to start planning. I debated between doing a giant birthday party at a function hall with catering (because his birthday is in the summer, I considered doing a lobster and clam bake) for the adults and babies and a birthday party specifically for the babies to have fun. Budget wise a function hall party with catering would have set me back more than $3K for at least 50 people on our guest list (around $60 a person), and not to mention not fun and stressful for the babies, particularly with all of the strangers. So I decided to go with a package party for up to 20 babies (and unlimited parents) at MyGym in Newton, which is a gym specifically for babies. Kasen is so active and he loves to crawl, climb, and cruise, and while everyone tells me he won't remember, his happiness and fun for that day meant more to me than anything. The times and date for his actual birthdate was taken, so we opted for the following week. This will allow us to have a more intimate birthday cake smash on his actual birthday - I'm psyched!

Anyway, we purchased a birthday package that included everything but the food and decorations as we wanted to get our own:

Our inspiration? Kasen's studio pictures. Theme colors are navy blue, baby blue, red, and white.

The Cake

Entirely inspired by the amazing studio pictures of him with the cloud and paper planes background, I decided to go with a triple berry cake with alternating layers of vanilla and chocolate cake from Konditormeister, with a decoration similar to the following:

The Goodies

Georgetown Cupcake mini red velvet cupcakes - with their signature cream cheese frosting, birthday sprinkles and custom fondant "1"s in red and blue. I can't wait for these. We even got a tower to display them!

 

Goodies for the Adults - Mouth Party sea salt and chocolate sea salt caramels for the adults - in clear bags of two, tied with a navy blue ribbon.

Goody Boxes filled with organic yogurt melts, reusable straw cup, inflatable beach balls, bubbles, coloring books and crayons. We got all of Kasen's birthday favor items from Birthday Express.

The Decorations

From Etsy I purchased a reusable custom banner that will say "Happy Birthday Kasen" and a custom personalized crown for Kasen from Little Speckled Frog. I'm so excited to receive them!

The Food

We love Pini's Pizza in Waltham. It's incredibly flavorful and fresh. So instead of generic cheese pizza, we are going to get our favorites to share with everyone - Virginia's Pesto Special (artichoke, pesto, and mushrooms) and Meat Lover's with Garlic. along with Margherita pizza. Awesome.

For the babies we plan to put out coolers of YoBaby organic yogurt, organic baby cookies from Ella's Kitchen, and Kasen's favorite animal crackers from Pennsylvania Dutch Candies.

For drinks we plan to have assorted soda and small bottles of water.