Leo's Official 1st Birthday Party

DISCLAIMER:  PICTURE OVERLOAD!!!

I'm sure many of you are on THE EDGE OF YOUR SEAT wondering what in the world Leo's birthday cake looked like!  (Ok, maybe not, but since it was such an ordeal for us it only seems fitting to devote part of this post to the cake!)  

I realize this is going to sound RIDICULOUS to many of you but I'm going to share anyways :)  We decided to make a 3RD practice cake on Thursday night (3 nights before the party).  We had accomplished the rectangle look, but we wanted the corners to be more defined so we tried it AGAIN!  (This cake was reconstructed for Leo's individual cake so it was not made in vain!!)

Okay, without further adieu...the birthday cake reveal :) 

My rolling pin wasn't large enough for the fondant so we improvised :)

Our counter wasn't big enough for the cake board & fondant so we used the floor.  

(No worries, this fondant was just for looks!  No one actually ate it.)

This guy is THE BEST!  I wouldn't even attempt some of my projects if I weren't married to this man.

It took us 2 tries (I forgot to put icing underneath the first time) but we got it!!

Ryan made a stop at Country Kitchen one night on his way home from work to find out if we could make our fondant brightly colored without making it taste like food coloring.  They were very helpful.  We ended up using two different red colors to get the look we wanted without the bitter taste.

We did it!  We got the colors we were shooting for!

I promise, my kitchen does not always look like a pig sty, 

but in the middle of baking it almost ALWAYS does! 

One of our cakes was fake; so I measured,

and Ryan cut.  We're pretty sure this isn't how the 

professionals do it, but it worked for us!

Our real cakes were taller than our fake cake, so Ryan got his handy-dandy Elmer's glue out and fixed it right up!  (I have to say I've looked at Elmer's glue in a whole new way since I've been married.  Ryan's philosophy is Elmer's glue can fix about anything & it's true people...you'd be amazed at how well it works!  Duct tape, you are yesterday's news in this household!) 

My favorite: chocolate cake with peanut butter filling

Making sure everything's straight!  (See that foil lined piece of cardboard on the bottom?  That was Ryan's idea, to help make the transfer from the counter to the cake board easier....one of the best ideas of the whole process!)

Dirty iced & ready to go!

Working on those edges!

The transferring of the cakes was successful!  Go Ryan!

I usually hit a wall during projects.  I've only got so many hours in me & then I'm DONE for the day!  Thankfully Ryan was the decorator & still had plenty of energy to do the finishing touches.  I started working on decorations while Ryan finished up.

It's amazing how those little details made that cake POP!

Finally at 2:00 AM we finished the cake!

source

This was the idea instigator.  This one is more perfect than ours, but personally I liked how ours turned out better!  We even used real cake.  Connor's cake, we're not so sure (or maybe they're just that good & we're just amateurs).

It really is a shame that Leo isn't old enough to appreciate this cake.  If he could only understand how many hours were spent on this process he'd be so embarrassed impressed!

When did our families get so big?!

We took pictures of Leo throughout his first year, so we decided to hang them up.

It's neat to see how he changed from month to month.

Every once in a while I get creative & come up with a good idea!

Birthday boy!

The party!

I think it would have been funny if we would have taken a picture of what Leo was looking at.  I'm not exactly sure how many people were behind that camera trying to make him smile but it was probably way more than necessary!

He started to get intrigued.

If only he knew what he was being prepared for!

Pre-cake treat going in the mouth there!

SO BIG!

I think he liked licking off his fingers more than eating the cake!

Clean up in the sink.

Disassembling the cake was way easier than putting it together!

First cake, then presents...

birthdays are so fun!

To recap:

Epic Fail!

We think we can, we think we can...

WE KNEW WE COULD, WE KNEW WE COULD!

If you made it to this point, thanks for staying tuned!!