The dreaded first birthday.  Some people go ALL out, I know parties that have hundreds of guests and thousands of dollars spent!  Though I wanted to do something special for her first birthday, we are not quite on that level.  We also don’t have many friends, even fewer with children, and our family is quite small, so that meant our guest list was automatically tiny.  We were perfectly fine with that.  I was able to reuse all the tableware from my baby shower, which is why I chose the pink and purple theme for her birthday in the first place.  We call her “Bug,” but since ladybugs or bumble bees don’t go well with pink, I opted for butterflies, which are one of my favorite things anyway.  I didn’t DIY as much as I would have if the party was bigger, but I did do a few cute things so I wanted to share them with you.

Homemade Gluten/Dairy Free White Cake and Strawberry Frosting:

I searched and searched for recipes that were both “healthy” but also something that I could eat with all my darn allergies.  I could have made two cakes, but I love the pictures of the baby feeding their smashed cake to their parents, so I wanted to make sure that if that moment happened I didn’t have to turn her away.  I finally gave up and settled on white cake and strawberry frosting.  I mean, strawberries are a fruit right?!  That has to count for some healthy points!  Just ignore the pounds of butter and powdered sugar mixed with said strawberries.

Ingredients:

• I made this white cake and from Barefeet In The Kitchen.  The only thing I altered was I replaced the brown rice flour, potato starch, and tapioca starch with Betty Crocker gf flour.  My husband and I personally thought the almond extract taste was a little too strong and overpowered the strawberry, so if I were to make it again I would half the almond extract.  Besides that it was super delicious!
• I made this fresh strawberry frosting  from the same website.  She uses regular butter, but I obviously replaced that butter with milk free butter and the taste and texture was just fine.  The recipe calls for one pound of strawberries (and boasts a full pound of strawberries in the frosting in the description), but later says to only put a half cup of strawberry puree into the actual frosting.  Half a cup was easily only a fourth of my pureed pound of strawberries!  That couldn’t be right?!  So I was dumb and added more of the strawberries, only to realize that gave my frosting too much moisture (I mean, duh), so I had to add more than double the powdered sugar to make up for it.  I ran out of powdered sugar and couldn’t run out to the store, so the frosting was a little thinner than I would have liked, but I made it work.  Either way, the frosting tasted delicious and I had frosting to spare!
• 6 inch cake round (or some place to put your cake)
• Chocolate for dipping (I used two bags of milk free chocolate chips)
• Lollipop sticks (or not, either way)
• Optional: Squeeze bottles for decoration
• Big “1” candle!

Smash Cake Directions:

1. I decided to make cake pops (which turned into balls) for the rest of the guests, so I came up with an ingenious (or at least I thought so) idea where I only had to make one cake for everything!  I made the recipe above and poured it all into a 9X11 baking pan and followed the baking instructions in the recipe.
2. Once cooked, I took the can to my gf oatmeal (4in diameter) and cut out two circles of my larger cake.  I then carefully cut each layer in half, and stacked them on a 6in cake round with a layer of frosting between each cake layer. 
3. I wanted to do a rose swirl frosting design, but because my frosting was too thin I opted for just a simple clean frosting.
4. Since I had leftover chocolate, I thinned that out even more, put that in a squeeze bottle, and then drizzled that onto the smash cake.

Cake Pop (Ball) Directions:

1. To make the cake pops (balls), I crumbled the rest of the cake into a large bowl, then poured enough of the frosting into the bowl to completely coat the cake and mixed it all together.
2. Because my frosting was so thin, I placed the bowl in the fridge for a few hours to get the frosting to thicken up a bit.
3. Then I rolled the cake/frosting mixture into balls and tried to stick a lollipop stick into them, but again, the frosting wasn’t holding onto the stick so balls they became.  I placed all the balls onto a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper.
4. Once all the mixture was rolled into balls and placed on the cookie sheet, I popped them into the fridge for a few hours to harden even more.
5. Then I melted chocolate chips and added a bit of oil to thin out the chocolate to a dip-able consistency and then I dipped each ball into the chocolate, shook off excess chocolate, and then placed them back on the same cookie sheet.
6. Once they were all dipped, I put the cookie sheet back into the fridge to let the chocolate harden.
7. Since I had leftover frosting, I thinned it out a bit and put it in a squeeze bottle, then drizzled the frosting over the balls.

I am really happy how it all turned out and it tasted super yummy!  We had leftover cake and balls for a week and oh darn, I was forced to eat them all.

Pink and Purple Butterfly Banners:

Materials:

• Pink banner triangles
• Pink letter stickers
• Pink ribbon/raffia
• Pink/Purple 8.5X11 or 8X8 cardstock
• White pipe cleaners
• Single hole punch

Directions:

1. I bought all of the materials at Michael’s.
2. Follow the instructions on how to make the cardstock butterflies here.  I used 8.5X11 carstock and simply cut it down to 8.5X8.5 to make it square.  The packet of cardstock I had came with three different pinks and a purple, so I mixed those colors to make the butterflies.  One sheet makes one set of wings, so each butterfly takes two pieces.
3. I lined up the banner triangles on my coffee table and carefully placed the letters as centered as I could eyeball.  Meh, good enough.  I would have loved to have one of these purple, but Michael’s literally did not have any purple so pink they both were.
4. I used a single hole punch to punch holes on the sides of each banner triangle and the top wing of each butterfly.
5. I then cut strips of pink raffia and individually tied each piece of the banner together in the appropriate order (laid out in picture above).
6. I used blue paint tape to tape the ends of the banner onto the edges of windows, not pictured.

Butterfly Themed Outfit:

Dress and Bloomers:  You would not imagine how difficult it is to find a cute little girl’s dress that has pink and purple butterflies that is NOT tacky.  Near impossible!!  I finally found a store on Etsy that had fabric I liked, and asked them if they could make a dress out of their fabric and bloomer covers to match.  They were happy to do it!  Victory!

Headband:  I made her headband using this video tutorial and an old stretchy skirt I had that just happened to be orange and pink and already cut up from another project.  This is why it is important for a true crafter to save everything!  You never know when it will be useful again.

Shoes:  I got adorable pink floral shoes from Target.

That was it, all of the decorative festivities.  I had pinned a lot more on Pinterest and I would have done more if we had a larger party, but I am happy with what we did and it was much less work!  Is it bad I am already planning her second birthday?  😉