The Party! Part 1

I've decided that I'm going to have to do Aubrey's birthday recap in a couple of installments. Since we have SO many pictures to share, I think it would be a bit overwhelming to do it all in one post. I'll start with some party details.

I've made reference to our cake fiasco... Well, I'll go ahead and get that story out of the way. My mom went to pick the cake up for me the morning of the party. She texted me and told me to prepare myself because the cake looked nothing like the picture they had shown me of what it would look like. Oh wonderful. Let me just share with you what I was expecting her to show up with. This picture is very similar to the cake that I was expecting. It's not exactly the same, but it gives you a good idea. I knew our cake wouldn't be fondant, but I was still expecting it to look something like that. The cake place never told me that it wouldn't look like that. What's more, they're the ones who showed me that picture. It's not like I took that picture into the shop and asked them to make it. So back to the day of the party. My mom shows up at my house mere hours before the party with this:
No, I'm not kidding. I wish I was. I freaked out. I had bought a pretty cake stand for the cake, and I was planning on having it sitting on the table as the center piece. Well, obviously I had to scratch that idea. Now, you may be thinking that the cake isn't that bad. And I guess it's not, if I had made it myself. But I didn't. I wanted Aubrey's first birthday cake to be perfect, so I paid someone to do it for me. I was just so crushed. That probably seems so silly and shallow, but it's just something that was important to me. I'm not going to lie, I came very close to having a complete meltdown and throwing the cake in the sink (it would have felt SO good -- haha) but I had to buck up and let my dream of a pretty cake die. (I'm so dramatic, right??) We ended up keeping the cake in the laundry room and bringing out slices with ice cream for the guests. So only a select few actually saw the cake. Oh, the bakery also FORGOT Aubrey's smash cake. So they had to throw something together at the last minute. It actually looked about as good as the big cake. Haha!

I have to say that I still wholeheartedly support the ministry that this bakery supports. As disappointing as the cake situation was, the important thing to remember is that this ministry is helping to save the lives of unborn babies. So, no, I didn't like my cake, but I won't talk too bad about the bakery :o) Also, apparently the people who work at the bakery are just volunteers. I knew most of them were volunteers, but I didn't realize there aren't ANY real bakers there. I guess I should have done my homework a little better. The cake did taste great, so if I'm ever in need of something that tastes good but doesn't have to look pretty, this would be the place! Haha. It just feels wrong to talk bad about a ministry, so I had to add this disclaimer. The screwed up birthday cake makes a good story :o)

I might not have made the cake, but I DID make a birthday banner! I got the idea off of Etsy. It looked easy enough, so I decided to attempt it. I was so happy with the way it turned out. I got lots of compliments on it, and we'll definitely be reusing it for future birthdays :o) I had lots of help from David, by the way.

Finally, I thought Aubrey's little birthday outfit looked so cute! We decided to lose the bows after a few minutes because they were kind of in her face.

The dress was precious even without the bows though. Don't you think??
So, there is installment one of Aubrey's birthday party. Still to come: presents and cake eating! We got lots of cute pictures of Aubrey with her smash cake. We were a bit surprised by her reaction though...

PS -- if you haven't seen the slide show yet, be sure to scroll down and watch it :o)