Ozzie's 1st Birthday Party

It has taken me forever to get all of the pictures together in order to post Ozzie's 1st Birthday party but here it finally is! Oscar and I wanted to throw Ozzie a big bash since it was his 1st birthday plus we figured a July birthday called for a big backyard barbecue.

Below are the details to his big day. Sit back, take off your coat and stay awhile because this is going to be a long post. I apologize in advance but I spent a whole month planning his big day, it takes a month when you can only party plan in between naps, so I WILL share every last detail.

As I've mentioned before Ozzie shared his Mickey Mouse love with me by humming the tune to the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. We watch the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse in the mornings before his nap. So there he was happily humming the tune while playing with his toys one morning. When I finally caught on to what he was doing, I started singing along with him. He got so excited that I understood him and started humming louder in between giggles of course. It was really cute, he was quite pleased with himself for "communicating" with Mommy and I was impressed with his mini-milestone. Naturally when it came to deciding on a 1st birthday party theme I went with Mickey.

I wanted to set the theme for his party with the invitations. So I made Mickey Mouse invites and the trendy envelope mailing wraps that keep popping up all over the blogs. I found free Mickey clip art on Disney Clips and free Mickey font at 1001 Free Fonts. I used Microsoft Publisher to create both and printed the invitation on white card stock. Below are his invitations. Oscar talked me out of a black border around the invites and I'm still wishing I didn't follow his advice. They look as if they are missing a little something to me. Oh well, what's done is done.

Next up were the favors. Since Ozzie has a summer birthday, I went with the summer theme and gave out bubbles. The Dollar Store had 3 bottles of bubbles for $1 in Mickey colors so I snatched up about 30 bottles and started on the Mickey bottle labels. I used the same Mickey clip art, font and background for the bottle labels as the envelope mailing wraps.

On Saturday mornings, we have a Farmers Market just down the street where I picked up local dahlias in Mickey's red & yellow colors. I used old pasta jars for the vases and scattered red & yellow dahlias through out the house and on each table outside for the barbecue.

Garlands, garlands and more garlands. I discovered my love of garlands when I made this cross garland for Ozzie's Baptism back in June. I thought it would be fun to make Ozzie a little "I'm One" garland for his high chair as well as the "Happy 1st Birthday" garland that we hung above the mini-candy buffet. Using the same clip art and Mickey font, I cut out the letters in circles, glued them to larger yellow & red circles and hung the letters on red ribbon. Who knew garlands would be so fun? Now I'm hooked and will be making a garland whenever socially acceptable.

I knew I wanted to attempt to create a candy buffet since they are all the rage right now. However, I decided to go with a mini-buffet because I had already made 48 cupcakes and did not want my guests to be overloaded with sweets. Of course, the candies were in Mickey's colors- red, yellow and black. Sorry the lighting is horrible. Photographer I am not.

I found this template for mouse ears on Disney Playhouse but I didn't like the suggested cone hats because they were very busy. Instead I purchased cone hats at the party supply store in primary colors. Using the template, I cut out mouse ears with black card stock and added the ears to the cone hats by cutting a hole on each side with a craft knife. My only regret is that we didn't get a picture with Ozzie wearing his red cone hat and ears.

I made Ozzie a 01 t-shirt with iron on numbers and a plain red t-shirt. Sorry it's wrinkled, this picture was taken after the festivities started.

Here are pictures of the 48 cup cakes I made. I actually made three flavors; yellow cake, chocolate cake and Barefoot Contessa's coconut cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. I have to say that her cream cheese frosting is the best homemade frosting I've had.

Also, her recipe does not call for toasted coconut flakes but I toasted them anyway. I can't have coconut cupcakes without toasted coconut flakes sprinkled on top. YUM!!! I found baking cups in yellow and red and the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cupcake toppers at the party supply store.

Oscar insisted we personalize Jones Soda bottles for Ozzie's birthday after seeing it at a friend's birthday party. Unfortunately Jones did not have a soda in yellow or red so we went with Berry Lemonade since it worked best with the barbecue theme. Funny thing is we forgot to put these out and only remembered when half the guests had already left- whoops!

I made Ozzie a chocolate Mickey ears cake. There was no way I was going to tint vanilla icing black so he got chocolate ears. I used one side of the Wilton Ball Cake Pan and cut a cupcake in half for the ears. I used icing to adhere the cupcake halves to the round cake.

Below is the progression of Ozzie freaking out after everyone sang the Happy Birthday song. He didn't like the attention and wanted nothing to do with the cake after that. I even tried to give him a lick of the icing but he wanted out of that chair and out of the spot light immediately!

Remember those pom poms I made for Ozzie's Baptism. Well I loved them so much, I made more in yellow and red and hung them from the umbrellas and tent in the back yard. I am officially pom pomed out so I don't think you will see them again as lovely as they are.

Since Ozzie is half Hispanic, he couldn't have his 1st birthday without a pinata. I found a Mickey pinata at the party supply store. Below is a picture of my Mom helping Ozzie hit the pinata. This is yet another thing we forgot to do until the party was half over. In fact the only kids left to hit the pinata were Ozzie, my nephew Andrew {seen below without his shirt on- remember this was the record breaking heat week for Seattle} and a friend's son. Of course, Ozzie cried after hitting the pinata too. It's funny, almost all of the kids in Oscar's family cry at their 1st pinata but boy do they get the hang of it by their 5th birthday!

As I mentioned earlier, we decided to throw a back yard barbecue since the weather was so nice. We went with an all American theme for the food since Mickey is America's favorite cartoon in an effort to tie the two together. I went to my favorite, The Barefoot Contessa, and a few others for recipes.

The Menu

Main Dishes:

Sugar Ray's Body Blow Ribs via Paula Deen- so so good!

Wild sockeye salmon with Potlatch Seasoning from Williams-Sonoma

Big Al's barbecued chicken

Side Dishes:

Ina's Potato Salad- if you make this, make sure you steam the potatoes for the full 20 minutes as suggested. The first time that I made this, I only steamed the potatoes for 15 minutes and some of the larger ones weren't as soft as I would have preferred.

Ina's Lemon Fusilli with Arugula. I have blogged about this salad before. It is my new favorite pasta salad. Her recipes says to serve warm but it is equally delicious cold. Also try adding salmon or shrimp. We served it with smoked salmon.

Corn, Avocado and Tomato Salad. Quite possibly the only recipe from Paula Deen not loaded with a pound of butter!

My Mom's Pansit

Italian Pasta Salad by me

1 lb dried fusilli or rotini pasta. Cook as directed and set aside.

Fresh mozzarella mini-balls or cut a large piece into bite sized chunks

2 red peppers- thinly sliced

1 can artichoke hearts

1 can medium sized olives

Dry Italian Salami- as little or as much as you'd like

1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

Bottle of your favorite Italian dressing. Use as much as you'd like. I prefer Newman's Own or Bernsteins.

Mix all ingredients in large bowl and season with salt & pepper to taste. Serve cold.

Honey Cornbread Muffins via the Neelys

Appetizers:

My Mom's famous Lumpia

Vegetable crudite

Chips & dip

Fresh fruit

Dessert:

Ina's Coconut Cupcakes

Chocolate cupcakes

Yellow cake cupcakes

Mini-candy bar

Whew! I told you this was going to be a long post. After all is said and done, Ozzie's 1st birthday party was a success but I do have a few regrets. I'm sure if you actually read everything I wrote you noticed the common theme of "we forgot". Here's the problem with throwing a big party, you spend all of your time running around trying to get all the food and decorations up that you spend zero time with your guests all while forgetting everything you are supposed to do.

Sadly, the pictures you see here of Ozzie are literally the only pictures we got of his big day. My friends all showed up with their little ones and I didn't get one shot of all the adorable babies running around or of everyone who came to celebrate Ozzie. We didn't even get a picture of the birthday boy with Mommy & Daddy. In fact, the food wasn't ready when most of my guests arrived so Oscar spent the entire party in front of the grill.

So as fun as it was to plan and throw my little guy a big 1st birthday bash, the lesson learned here is go small! Small birthday parties from now on! At least that is what I say until I see the new fun trends floating around on the blogs next year, then we'll see...

Happy 1st Birthday Ozzie!