Sharkface's Second Birthday Party

Also known as the party that I spent entirely too much time on Pinterest.

Starfish and Sand Dollars

Dinglehoppers

Rolled Utensils with Lifesavers

In case you haven't figured it out, it was a fish/shark/under the sea themed party.

Initially it was supposed to be a Finding Nemo themed party, but when I asked Steve to make the cake, I told him Fish/Shark/Nemo and let him go with it. After all, leave the cake making to the expert. I think that I mentioned before that Steve was a semi-finalist on the Holiday Baking Championship, right?

Shark Cake

Needless to say, I was thrilled with his creation!

Snack, Plate & Utensil Table 

For my kid-level table, I had plates and utensils down low to reach, as well as cheese (Shark Teeth), grapes (Seaweed), puff'n corn (Coral), pretzel sticks (Driftwood), and goldfish served in a fish bowl with a fish dipping net.

Coral is delicious

The kids seemed to really dig this table. At the end of the party, they grabbed the bucket of "Coral" and Mark kept dumping net-fulls of goldfish onto the table, plate, and floor.

Cheese Face

It's my party and I'll make a mess if I want to

Other winners of the day were the bouncy house, which I got for free through Jay's fire department buddies. Those things are worth their weight in gold for keeping the kids occupied. Parents could actually hang out and enjoy some cocktails. Speaking of which, our signature cocktail was a Shark Bite, which was basically a Moscow Mule made with Blueberry Vodka and garnished with blueberries.

I'm surprised he sat still long enough for this

The other hit was our impromptu photographer, as well as a super fun shark cutout that I ordered from Oriental Trading Company. Laura graciously grabbed my camera and started shooting without prompting... now I have amazing photos for my blog as well as some to share with the attendees. So THANK YOU, Laura!

We look a little too pleased to be eaten... be sure to check out Angela's Blog!

Slow Swimmers and Octopus Dip

Peanut Butter & Jellyfish Sandwiches and Sea Shell Salad

Submarine Sandwiches

The food items that didn't quite make it to the table:

Land Caviar - Devil Eggs
Sea Snails - Pigs in a Blanket

The Octopus Dip was supposed to have an octopus made out of a pepper sitting in the middle of the dip, but I ran out of time for that. I also was planning to carve a watermelon shark. It took me weeks to prepare for the party between making the food tags, ordering decorations and goodie bags. I completely forgot to take pictures of those, but they were these adorable fish bags that I got from Oriental Trading. I filled them with Nemo Stickers, bouncy balls, snacks, bubbles, and also candy shark tooth necklaces.

The day before the party was incredibly frustrating for me, as I had a lot of interruptions that ended up with Mark not napping and everything taking five times as long without my usual 2-3 hour window to get stuff done.

It took me four hours to ice these sugar cookies

Sand Dollar Almond Cookies were my own concoction

I have to say that I was pretty pleased with how my sand dollar cookies came out. I started off by using this recipe from Odense, but then I realized that I had more almond paste than they called for. So I added more butter and more flour. They turned out pretty tasty! I'm going to work on tweaking the recipe and will post it soon. The reason I decided to use almond paste is because I ordered a bunch of it when I made my own rainbow cookies and the paste expires in October.

Speaking of cookies, back to dessert!

Cake this awesome needs lots of pictures

Markface did his best to sing along

Markface clapping for his birthday song

Steve gave me a lengthy tutorial about how to dissect the shark - Mark looks concerned

Oh, maybe that was the dowel rod that Steve was talking about

The aftermath 

I let Steve have free rein over the design and type of cake. It was a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. I love that he dyed it red... the inside looked just like sashimi, which was a bit disturbing but also entertaining!

I almost forgot our drinks - sea water (water with cucumbers and mint, still attached to their stems to look like seaweed), and squid ink (iced tea). For the grown-ups, we also had a variety of beer, including Landshark - which I hadn't even thought about until the party was nearly over.

A few folks hung around after the party wound down, like our friends Jen and Tim. Since we're now officially part of the friends with kids crowd, we have to get our fun in whenever and wherever we can. I love spending time with my kid, but it's nice when I get the best of both worlds. I feel like I'm away from him plenty with working full time, plus all of the weddings (6 this year!) and other social engagements we have. It's nice to be able to enjoy some combined adult and kid time, especially when everyone is having a good time.

I hope that you enjoyed Markface's 2nd birthday highlights. If you need more ideas or want to see more pictures, there are hundreds on the Shutterfly site.

Markface's First Birthday

I've been wanting to post these photos for weeks and I am so happy that I finally have a quiet night at home to do it! Jay is working and I put Markface to bed early. Huzzah!

So, we did it. We kept him alive for an entire year.

We've been so busy for the past few months that I was tempted to say screw it and not throw a first birthday party at all. After all, he's not going to remember it. The first birthday party is always about the parents and the pat on the back we give ourselves for surviving.

Not gonna lie, that first year was brutal. I'm sure that each year will bring its own challenges, but this one was rough. 

There were many reasons not to throw the party on the date we decided to - it was Labor Day Weekend, we'd given everyone less than a week's notice, it was the day after we were attending a wedding, and Jay had to work the next day... among other things. The following weekend, we had TWO weddings to attend. We didn't have the "perfect" weekend to throw his party until nearly a month after his actual birthday.

So we said screw it, let's do it on his birthday - September 6th. 

On Monday, I sent my new friend Steve a message... was there any way he could do Markface's birthday cake for that weekend?

As luck would have it, he could. He asked me what I wanted to do... I said it could be simple and just have his name in the STAR WARS style font, or that he was welcome to be "creative" if he wanted. 

He's amazing, so obviously he went the creative route. 

"I was thinking Death Star," he said. 

The detail was just incredible.

"Oh, and you should do a smash cake, too."

These cakes were absolute masterpieces. And even better, they tasted awesome! I couldn't believe we had to actually eat them. 

The other really cool thing that we found out a few weeks ago is that Chef Steve is going to be on the Food Network's Holiday Baking Championship. It airs November 1st at 9 p.m. - make sure you tune in!

And my kid had to destroy his smash cake? Little did I know at the time that it was prepared by our own local celebrity.

He was actually pretty meticulous about the way he destroyed his cake. It was anticlimactic to be totally honest. First he ate the piping piece by tiny piece.

Then Dada ripped open the fondant so that he could get to the delicious inside... chocolate and vanilla.

He didn't have enough on his face, so Makayla (Aunt Brenda's granddaughter) smeared some icing on his nose. I was actually kind of happy at the lack of mess. I think it's pretty gross that parents purposely cover their kid's face in icing. It's sticky and just gross. Yuck. Not to mention that it's wasteful! Especially with a cake as great as that.

A day or two before the party, I realized that we were going to have a lot more people than our "low-key" planned event. I was expecting no more than 25 people. Maybe 30 people at most. We had over 50 show up! When I realized that the guest list was getting out of hand, I asked Steve to make some vanilla cupcakes. "Really, Lauren? You have a Death Star birthday cake, and you're asking for plain old vanilla cupcakes? "Okay! If that's what you want..."

He of course had to decorate our plain old vanilla cupcakes too. Which were amazing. I'm glad I got one before they were all eaten.

Here are more pictures from the party...

Twinsies!

We do what we can to get him to look up. He's always looking down - except of course when he's running or walking. Then he faceplants. A lot.

He looks thrilled.

With his Godfather Sean

Silly boy

Markface is all sugared up and on the loose... oh hey look, his tux has tails!

One last thing to mention about the party - due to the last-minute nature of it and pretty much not giving a shit, the food was terrible. We bought crappy pre-made burgers and hot dogs at the store, and I attempted to make baked beans for the first time. I used dry beans. They were awful. Thank God for the desserts (apart from Steve's cakes & cupcakes, we also had his Cannolios, which are amaaaaazing). Sara also brought cole slaw, and Jay's macaroni salad is always delicious... but the main food was pretty bad. We've fallen a long way from our grilled tenderloin with fresh horseradish sauce, raw oysters, mini quiches, fresh bruschetta on homemade baguettes and local cheese! And definitely no ice cream on fresh-baked cookies. I didn't even make pulled pork. Ugh. It was pretty embarrassing. Next time we'll do better... although maybe our poor performance will dissuade some guests from attending our next party. Ha!

I'm going to do my best to get back into blogging. Now that I'm getting more sleep, I hope to be back into it. I have so much to catch up on and we're also heading back to Key West for our five year anniversary in December. It's gone so fast! 

More to come soon, I hope!