Happy 1st Birthday Evan!

Today is Evan’s 1st birthday!! Here is an overview of the cake, food, and decorations.

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I can’t believe my baby boy is already a year old! We celebrated his birthday on Saturday with an Ocean themed party.

1st Birthday Chalkboard

For Evan’s birthday board, I bought a canvas and sprayed it with two coats of chalkboard paint. I bought two packs of chalk markers and used the red, blue, green, yellow, pink, and white markers.

Using Microsoft Word, I wrote out the words and set them to the fonts I wanted. I also added feet, yogurt, automobile, and apple clipart. There are many free fonts available. The fonts used for the board included Appleberry, Hiccups, Frenchy, KG Skinny Latte, Pea Two Peas and Their Pod, Delius, Milano LET, Impervious, Sketch Block, Vaguely Repulsive, Milk and Cereal, Eraser, and Auburn.

I printed off the fonts and clip art on thin (need to be able to see the letters on the other side) computer paper, cut, and arranged them on the board to make sure everything fit the way I wanted. The font size had to be adjusted on a couple of words and reprinted to get them to fit.

I colored in the letters on the opposite side of the paper (not the side with the ink) with the markers. I laid the paper in the desired spot, marker side down, and colored in the font with a pencil. This transferred a thin layer of chalk marker onto the board. I filled in the layer with the marker and repeated with the rest of the letters and images. The birthday board took me about 3 days to finish, but I loved the end result. If you mess up a section, it is easy to redo by erasing the area with a wet cloth.

Ocean Themed Birthday Cake

My mom made the cakes. She did such a great job!

Evan’s Smash Cake!

1st Birthday Food

Here is the food table! The party was at 3 in the afternoon, so I made a heavy assortment of appetizers.

I served Cheddar, Pretzel, and Parmesan Goldfish in sand buckets. I found the sand bucket idea from Amanda Pair. We live in Florida, so it was great to buy something to serve the food that we can also use with Evan this summer at the beach. The shovels were perfect for serving utensils.

I made an easy two-ingredient Nutella Yogurt Dip to go with the fruit (strawberry, Cara Cara orange, pineapple, cantaloupe, grape) platter.

I paired the vegetable (cucumber, carrot, celery, bell pepper, broccoli, grape tomatoes) with a Spinach Parmesan Dip. I labeled it as Seaweed Dip to go with the Under the Sea theme.

I made Peanut Butter and Jelly(fish) Sandwiches and used cookie cutters (Marine Life and Aloha) to cut the sandwiches into Ocean-themed shapes. Definitely use thin layers of peanut butter and jelly here. My first two were too thick and turned into a huge mess.

I bought Ocean-shaped pasta from World Market while I was visiting my mom. I used it for this Tomato, Mozzarella, and Basil Pasta. It was simple, but so good. It was my favorite of the leftovers after the party.

1st Birthday Decorations

I used scrapbook paper to make Evan’s banner. The only issue I had was not thinking when printing out the letters. The blue was so dark that I had a difficult time seeing the lines to cut it out. Next time I will definitely use a lighter color outline for the letters.

I used this beverage dispenser for the lemonade. It has an infuser filled with frozen strawberries.

Evan was not really a fan of the cake. He tried a couple of bites, but definitely didn’t get into it. I don’t think he liked the frosting touching his fingers. I tried again when there were no people around and still nothing.

Happy first birthday Evan!

Here are more of Evan’s birthday parties:

• Evan’s Lego Birthday Party
• Evan’s Mickey Mouse Birthday Party
• And Evan’s Star Wars Birthday Party
• Evan’s Cars and Planes Birthday Party