Violet’s Vintage Ballerina First Birthday Party

Description

For my daughter's first birthday we chose a ballerina theme. I used lots of pink and cream with brown as an accent color, because those are my favorite colors. I made all the desserts myself, and my mom helped me make the dinner.

Design Inspiration

I started planning the ballerina party shortly after she was born. The inspiration was an adorable ballerina-print cloth diaper she has from Greenlinediaper.com. It's too cute! I sewed a bib to match.

Decorating Style

I wanted the party to look vintage, with lots of lace and roses.

Project Details

I tinted the icing on the cakes with pureed beets, no food coloring! It worked so well! The flavor wasn't affected at all.

I used this tutorial for the rose cakes.

And this one for the polka-dot inside of the cake. That turned out so cute!

The homemade striped marshmallows are also tinted with beets. Aren't the stripes just the cutest?

This is the recipe for the gluten-free brownie cupcakes. We had a lot of gluten-free people at the party, they really appreciated being able to eat cake! This is the tutorial for the doily cookies. They looked amazing.

I made the rose pomanders by covering styrofoam balls with ribbon rosettes.

I used this recipe to make teething biscuits for the party favors. I used pureed sweet potato to make them pink, and cut them out with heart cookie cutters.

These five-minute fabric roses were so easy to make.

These meringues are easy to make and taste great! I piped them into rose shapes.

My best friend took the photos for me. She's so talented!

Favorite Items

My favorite item was the smash cake! I cut a watermelon into the shape of a cake and covered it with icing made from cream cheese, whipped cream, and pureed beets. I don't like to use food coloring, but wanted pink icing for my baby girl.

The ceramic ballet slippers hung in my bedroom when I was a little girl. I've always loved them!

I also love the vintage lace tablecloth, which is a family heirloom, and the chalk board, which I wrote out by hand. Q-tips work well as mini-erasers!

Advice

It takes a long time to pull together a party like this, especially if you want to do it all yourself. I'm so thankful to have a mom who helped me tirelessly on the day of the party! I wish I could recommend that everyone planning a party should have a mother like mine.

I saved some decorations that my sister and my husband's mom made for Violet's baby shower. I also used many items from Violet's nursery for the party. I love it when I can use things I already have!

Making a Pinterest board of ideas makes it a lot easier to stay organized. I used two boards, one for ideas, and then once an idea was completed I'd move the pin into the second board. Then on the day of the party I could look at the second board to make sure I didn't miss any of the things I had prepped. It worked out really well!

Here's my Pinterest board for the party.