マディソン絵日記/Madison Iwai Says: 07.2014

Since we will be in Japan when Violet officially turns 1, we decided to throw her an early birthday party to celebrate her first year and give her an opportunity to smash her cake... I do not think we introduced Madison to TV this early on in her life but I guess this is what happens when it's your second child... She will be exposed to everything so much faster than her older sister and that's why we knew Violet enjoys watching Bubble Guppies with her sister every morning. If you've never heard of a show called Bubble Guppies, give it a try because it's a pretty fun-educational show and even us the parents enjoy watching it. Every episode has pretty catchy songs:-) If you have Amazon Prime you can watch Season 1 & 2 for FREE otherwise it is on Nickelodeon Jr.

The party was at 2:30 after Violet's afternoon nap so we served only snacks and desserts which gave us a very stress free preparation experience... And once again Oriental Trading Company provided us some key party decoration elements in exchange for money of course:-)

Party Food Menu:

Fruits and Veggie Sticks:-) They are sitting in a very cool inflatable tray filled with ice to keep the food cold... One of the questionable purchases made by Dave actually being useful...

Yes, cutting up fruits and veggies are easy... All my energy was spent on making a beautiful dessert buffet for the guests and of course our birthday girl:-)

I made Coconut Cupcake filled with Coconut Custard Cream... A gift from Robert and Holly came in super handy to cut out those filler holes using the strawberry huller...

Also made chocolate-caramel covered marshmallow and ocean layered jello, they were a big hit:-)

My first attempt at baking a Vegan cake came out too dense so found this Vegan Strawberry Cake recipe on Pinterest and this came out very fluffy and tasty! The recipe called for freeze dried Strawberries which I didn't have on hand so I did change the recipe a bit by using pureed fresh strawberries and other ingredients like using apple sauce instead of sugar it calls for but then you would have to adjust other liquid amounts to balance out, etc... I should write down exactly what I did before I forget, this recipe is a keeper:-) I baked the cake as one flat sheet cake and used circle cookie cutters to cut out 3 different size circles to make...

A 3 Tier Birthday Cake!!

Done and ready to be smashed!! Hard to tell but I attempted ombred purple frosting look...

The camera operator said to make a funny face...so Madison did :-)

Violet got off to a bit of a slow start so Madison showed her how it was done before Violet would end up spending at least a half hour in her chair devouring her cake...