Our daughter Vidhi’s first birthday was the biggest excuse for a party occasion for us ever since our marriage. Well, her birthday was three months ago and I am writing about it today because on her birthday, I had no clue that soon I will be doing a blog.

My daughter’s first birthday picture

When this blog came into existence, it was a bit busy for me. And I am enjoying it because I get to document each and every precious moment that I spend with her. So today I decided to write about the first birthday of our parenthood.

Before you jump to all the photos, I want to make two points. First, her birthday was on a Tuesday but it being a working day, we threw her birthday party on the weekend. So we had two parties. We had a Tuesday party and a Saturday party.

Tuesday party was a private affair. I made cake for her. I've loved baking since my childhood and what could be a better occasion to bake than your baby’s birthday. When my husband was done with work, we packed up and went to Heritage Park at Overland Park to celebrate this special day. The celebration was done in two phases. We ordered our new DSLR camera specially for her birthday. So it is obvious that first phase was a photo session. I got her into this pretty pink frock and let her enjoy walking with bare feet.

Only problem was that we were running out of sunlight. So we hurried up. It was then that I realized how difficult it is to photo shoot a toddler. They won’t stop for you to get the perfect shot. But with some luck, we got some good shots of our little crackpot. And of course you can’t leave the family out of the shoot on the big day. It was a celebration of us growing our family.

Second phase was to let Vidhi cut her birthday cake. But wait. We needed to set-up and again the sun was setting. Mumma to rescue! I literally ran to get this set-up done. My hubby was reminding me again and again about Mr. Sun. He was happy with the birthday banner and balloons alone but I wanted the tree as well. Some how I managed to pull this off.

First birthday at Heritage Park, Overland Park with home made cake

I changed her dress and put her in this pink tutu which was just a bit bigger for her. But her diaper was determined to not let the tutu go away. When we left her to enjoy her cake and the set up, she focused on the grass rather. It was soft under her tiny feet and she was enjoying it. However if you are a kid, you can’t ignore balloons for long. So finally she stepped on to the stage and the show began.

It took her a while to reach the cake. She was quite busy inspecting the whole setup. At one point she just sat under the birthday banner and balloons. Her daddy picked her up and put her in front of the home-made cake. I was sure that she would love lots of color on her cake. So I put some MnM in the icing. It was a vanilla base with vanilla icing. I chose to use light peach color on top and light green around the edges. She was picky in the beginning. Totally in love with MnM. But when she tasted the icing, these were the lovely expressions she gave me. It was the biggest compliment to my cooking. Don’t wonder friends. I love to cook.

She did not smudge the cake. Just tried to eat her end of the cake. I finally cut out a big piece and gave it to her. She was pretty tired after all this and decided to get a nap while I wrapped up the whole thing.

Then came Saturday. If you think the Saturday birthday party preparation started on Friday, then I would interrupt you right there. It started two months before her first birthday. We had the birthday party at our apartment. It gave us lots of options to decorate till our hearts were content, to prepare and serve fresh food and above all, comfort. Well I planned many ways to decorate our apartment and it took a while to decide upon the final choice.

We wanted to decorate the living room, dining room and the room adjacent to living room which served as a dining hall on the party day. I wished to have lots of colors. So the theme was neutral colored. This birthday party decoration would have worked out for a baby boy as well. I wanted flowers, birthday banner and Vidhi’s name on a wall. And this is what I came up with. The letters to write ‘VIDHI’ are home made and so are the flowers. I took a print out of Tinker bell and pasted her just near this whole set up, to work some magic.

We have a slanted roof in our living room and I made the most out of it for decoration. We used four color streamers to make a tent shape on the roof. It looked lovely. We pulled eight stripes towards the main stage while other three sides got four stripes each. The center was finally covered by a thin cardboard plate decorated with colored circle shapes. This part of decoration was done on Thursday and Friday night before the party.

We have stairs inside our apartment and the portion between the top of the stairs and our living room is open space. I utilized it to make a colorful wall of these lovely round pendants. I made them a month before party. I had to use a lot of thread to keep them facing in one direction. I almost felt like a spider, webbing. Wow, maybe I am Spider woman.

The dining area of our apartment opens up in the kitchen as well as living room. So we used it as extended sitting area and snack serving area. This is the only picture of the octopus pinata that I made for my girls birthday. I made it two weeks in advance.

Over the dining area, I wished to keep the decoration light. So I cut out some circles of different shapes and made some small garlands hangings with three circles in it. I choose pink, green and blue colors. Wondering when I made these? On Friday. No not the Friday just before party. The Friday before that Friday. And I even hung them up on the roof on Saturday a week before the party Saturday. Confused? Hah. Me too. Anyways, they were hanging there for a whole week before the party happened.

Decoration for first birthday party with DIY octopus pinata

So overall, this is how the decoration turned out. This picture was taken from dining area.

With dining area converted to extended sitting area, I picked up the room right next to the living room as dining room. I kept the decoration simple, but interesting, for this room. I threaded a few balloons together and hung them over the food table. I put two lamps to make the room look more warm. I stacked Vidhi’s toys on a long steel cabinet, between the entree table and dessert table.

The meal was Vegetarian Indian cuisine, also prepared by me. I did all the preparations on Friday and started cooking at 7 am on Saturday. And to nobody’s wonder, I cooked all day almost till the party started. You thought it was a cakewalk? No sir, it wasn’t. Which brings us to the cake. With so much to cook, I let Walmart prepare the party birthday cake for my baby. It was delicious, two tiered vanilla cake with a yellow bow on top. There were small different colored polka dots and flowers on it.

How can I forget about birthday girl’s party dress. Because it was an ordeal to get one pretty dress for her. Why? Well her birthday was in September and by that time almost all the stores run out of pretty dresses as they are waiting for new dresses for the holiday season. So we ran to Kohls, Macy’s even Costco (can you believe that? Costco for a dress? Although I love the quality of the stuff they provide but we will discuss that later). Finally we got the dress we wanted for her, at Burlington Coat Factory. Also I got these matching adorable shoes for her there. And this was the little story behind the dress. Nevertheless, I loved it and she got compliments on it. The bow on her head was my creation.

And thus all the preparation were done for my daughter’s first birthday party. We had fun, although I really wish I would have tied my hair up but seriously I didn’t have time for that. I wore a dress from Chaps and my husband pulled on this cool vest on a cream white shirt and jeans. This is our little happy family at this memorable occasion for us. Lots of thanks to all my friends who made this day special with their presence and blessings.

Happy birthday my sweet girl. Our family at birthday party.

It was an amazing wonderful year. A year of joy, a year of wonder, a year of learning, a year of exhaustion and tiredness . A year of learning lots of patience taught to us by our baby. Above all, a year of bliss. I love my daughter more than anything else. Happy first birthday sweetie. Hey hubby, don’t worry, I love you too.

Vidhi at her first birthday party