Creations By ASH: A Penguin Party

A year has gone by already, and our sweet little man has turned one! Like most parents, we wanted to plan a party to celebrate this fact but the big question was what to do for a theme. I love to plan parties and have people over so I was looking forward to planning some fun for Perrin.

Andrew and I tossed around a few ideas and then settled on a Penguin theme. This winter Perrin had a cute little hat that had a penguin on it - every time he would come in and take off the hat and put in on top of the coat tree, he'd get all excited and wanted to give it a kiss. Once Andrew brought up that as a theme we knew we'd found the right one.

I poked around on Pinterest looking for ideas, and talked with my mom and mother in law asking them to keep their eyes open for penguin decorations. My mom found a few and I found another one at Savers (which he loved). My best friend Courtney mentioned she'd gotten some cute penguin cut outs from Oriental Trading and said to check out what they had. I ordered the penguin cut out and some cute napkins to go with our theme (you can see the cut outs in the background of this picture). I just stuck the penguins all over the house, which Perrin loved! He would see them and start laughing and pointing at them, it was great.

I made a Happy Birthday Banner compliments of Shanty to Chic, I just used alternating blue and red scrapbook paper to back the letters.

I bought paper goods and a table cloth at the Dollar Store (its the cheapest place to get stuff like that).

We got to try out the display tables Andrew made me for the first time! Love them!

Perrin's favorite stuffed penguin Min hung out with the homemade bread (the napkins I got from Oriental Trading along with the cut outs).

The penguin cookie idea I found on the crafty penguin (love the name) blog. Mine didn't turn out quite as smooth as theirs, but they were cute and yummy! I made them up ahead of time and froze them, and when I went to get them out the black frosting had turned slightly purple. Not sure why!

I looked for some cute penguin clip art and found this one. Andrew made me cupcake toppers from it. I glued them to some of the scrap paper left over for the banner, cut them out, and hot glued toothpicks to them. I think they turned out pretty cute!

For my last birthday Andrew and Courtney gave me the supplies to starting making cake pops. Surprisingly, they're easier to make then one would think and they are super yummy! Andrew got this cook book by Bakerella which gives step by step directions on how to make perfect cake pops, its an awesome cook book. Her from-scratch cake recipes are great, I used the chocolate recipe to make cupcakes, and the vanilla one for the cake pops. I used the Butter Cream frosting recipe from the Martha Stewart Cupcakes book, they turned out so yummy! They reminded me of the cupcakes my grandmother Wilkins use to make for us as kids. Score one for happy memories passed on!

Cake pops - these were a HIT! Everyone loved them! I used a bag of white chocolate melting wafers with a confetti look to dip my cake pops in, and tin buckets that I've had for forever to display them. I put a piece of styrofoam inside the bucket and covered it with blue and white sea glass (from a decorative vase in our living room). I was pretty proud of that idea, it went with our wintry/penguin/blue theme.

We had Broccoli Potato Soup for lunch - one of Perrin's favorite foods.

I made up cute little tags for the food from the scraps left over from the banner. (You have a lot of scraps left over after making the banner).

I found the candle at the Dollar Store, it really looked quite cute surrounded by penguins.

We also did "Make your own Caesar Salad". The penguin stamp I got at AC Moore, and used it to make the invitations we sent out.

We also had strawberry lemonade to drink (which we failed to get a picture of). I made up a hybrid strawberry lemonade recipe using one can of lemonade concentrate with a medium size package of strawberries (we washed them, cut them up, and put them through the blender) and added half a bottle of ginger ale to the mix. It was yummy! We served the lemonade in mason jars.

I set up the server in our living room with the scrapbook I made of Perrin's baby pictures, some of my favorite family pictures, and his birthday cards. I made "penguin trail mix" with penguin crackers I found a Walmart (the store brand), pretzel Goldfish, and mini M&Ms. It was pretty yummy! We also did a bowl of Swedish Fish, which my nephew Weston thought were delicious. He kept sneaking them when none of the adults were looking. :)