Angelica's First Birthday

The month of February seems to have just flown by in a wink! Soon our little Jelly Belly is going to be 13 months, instead of 12! Oh my! She's growing so fast! I remember how overwhelmed I felt when we first moved to Guangzhou, and how I fretted anxiously over her first birthday - to the point of tears! I was terrified that she would have no children at her party, and it would be all my fault for not having made any friends. Well, that certainly wasn't the case! We had lots of friends to celebrate with us - and just the right number of children - for all of whom we are extremely grateful.

Well, here they are: Angelica's birthday photos. Sorry it's taken me so long to blog about it. I put the album together on my facebook account first so that family, friends, and relatives back home could get a glimpse of what Angelica's special day was like. Now it's time to put this blog in motion.

The last few days leading up to Angelica's party (on February 15th) were a maze of activity. On Thursday, I spent the morning, and part of the afternoon, buying decorations, candles, and gifts for the party bags (in Canada I could have done all of this in an hour, but in Guangzhou these items are not easy to find unless you know where to look . . . and you can speak Chinese). My friend, Shelley, came with me and introduced me to a whole new world of crazy shopping (thanks, Shelley!)! There are so many fabulous markets to explore in Guangzhou . . . and you can buy almost anything . . . but once again, you have to know where to go and where to look once you get there! Who would have thought that buying party decor could take so much time and energy!

I baked the 2 large cakes, and cupcakes, on Friday. Saturday I accosted a balloon man and spent the day shopping for fruit and icing ingredients (milk and butter - fortunately, I brought back two large bags of icing sugar from Canada - and I used all but a cup!), as well as decorating the house for the party and planning the games. Sunday morning I woke up before 6 am and started decorating the cakes (I was really feeling the pressure then!). I finished decorating both cakes, all the cupcakes, and arranging the fruit platter by 1:30 pm. This gave me enough time to eat breakfast (I was bad and only had a plum to keep me going that whole time . . . but I did snack on a few grapes and strawberries so it wasn't that bad). I was soooooo happy when all the planning was finished. All in all, I was quite pleased with how everything turned out.

Angelica's lady bug cake. Yes, I decorated it myself and everything was made from scratch - from the frosting to the cake batter. The only synthetic additions were the oreo cookies and the licorice antennae.


This was supposed to be a large daisy, but I accidentally put it on the wrong cake platter. My bad!

To go with our ladybug theme, my friend Shelley bought Jelly the sweetest ladybug bowling set.

Angelica LOVES ribbons!

Angelica's first taste of birthday cake. Personally, I wish her hat came in MY size!


As for the invitations, I only made one like this. When I realized how long it was going to take me to make the rest, I quickly abandonned that idea and created something on photoshop to email out. The e-vite only took 30 minutes (once Glenn showed me how to convert my creation to a PDF file - I'm so thankful for him!).

This is the poem that I wrote on the invitation:

Squeals, giggles, and wiggly toes,
Wispy blond hair, and a cute button nose.
A year has flown by, like a bee on a flower;
So we’d love you to join us for this happy hour!

Angelica’s birthday ~ a lovely surprise!
It’s sure to delight and bring joy to her eyes
To see you all there with your smiles and songs,
And we promise her party won’t last very long.

Please join us for ice cream and cake, if you please,
And IF you’re all good there may even be CHEESE!
Please RSVP of your plans to attend;
We thank you all kindly for the responses you’ll send.

Guess how many Cheerios were in the sippy cup? Give up? 250 . . . believe it or not!



Daisy Cupcakes


The BIG birthday blowout!

Luke wanted to show me how his birthday blower worked.

I can't understand why Luke didn't believe me when I said I'd be serving this for dinner the next time he came to visit (playdough cooking set).

It certainly was a memorable day. A special thanks goes out to everyone who shared it with us! We were so glad that you could be apart of it.