Greta's Birthday Round-Up

Greta's birthday has long since past and it was quite a hum-dinger of a party. Everyone who's anyone was there. Well, I guess you could say everyone who's related to us was there. It was a full house as usual but it was great times for one Greta the Great.

We started out with gifts. The very first gift Greta opened was this doll. And I was sitting behind her but apparently her face was priceless. She loves babies and she embraced this little one like it was her own flesh and blood. She has yet to be named, though. Any ideas?

The gift craziness continued (notice how she's still clutching that baby!)

Then it was on to supper. On the menu for this festive occasion: baked potato chili bar, veggies and dip. I kept it pretty simple but it was a great meal to make since I could prepare the chili the day before and the toppings all could be prepared in the morning. Here's the gang partaking:

Greta is big into forks and spoons these days and she insists on feeding herself. Needless to say, I will not tell you what my kitchen floor looks like on most days.

After that, it was cake time! Now, you all know my past with cake decorating. The results are not good, people. So this time, I was gonna play it waaaaaaaay safe. Greta loves books and so I thought this could be my opportunity to make a half-decent cake. My mom was an old-school cake decorator back in the day and she had this book-shaped cake pan. Not knowing what it would look like, I went with a from-scratch chocolate cake because if it wasn't going to look pretty, it was gonna taste pretty, for Pete's sake. These are the results:

I have to say, it's probably my best work. I don't know if you can pick up on this but notice the page creases on the side. Yeah, I know. I'm awesome. I was too lazy to change to a thinner tip for the balloon strings so it did come out looking a little turd-y but you have to admit, it's better than Ruby's dog cake her first year.

And as I wasn't sure if this would feed us all, I made cupcakes as well.

I got all creative up in here and decorated them with a G (You know, because Greta's name starts with a 'G'? Please don't go around labelling me a creative genius or anything....but I am).

Once it was time to blow out the candle, Greta needed a little help,

After that, well you know what happens. She did have a little (okay, a lot of) help from Uncle Andrew. And thankfully, I did have a lot of (okay, a little) help from Uncle Andrew cleaning up after too :)

The end result:

Final verdict: First birthday declared a success!