Apple of Our Eye First Birthday: Food, Dessert & Favors!

Good morning! Hope you had a great weekend, especially if it was a 3 day weekend, like it was for us.

Olivia thinks it’s really fun to wake up before 7 the past three days. I don’t think it’s fun. She must be super excited to turn one.

I still have to go over the menu from her party. I made so many good recipes, I can’t NOT do a post about it.

The party started at 3. Naps actually worked out perfect that day and she went down for her second nap at 2. She woke up around 4:20, which gave everyone time to get there and have some food before the party girl woke up.

I put out chips, salsa, hummus and spinach dip for people to snack on before the food came out. I had scoops, Food Should Taste Good multigrain chips and rice chips too. Something for everyone. My Uncle Tom made the spinach dip (2 batches) and it was GONE. Next time we’ll make more.

Drinks: I had water, apple cider, apple cider sangria, iced tea/lemonade and beer and wine. We had about 50 people (maybe a couple more) and I wanted to make sure (again) there was something for everyone. I LOVE these big drink jugs and mason jars because I can just put out the jars and not worry about water bottle waste.

For the apple cider sangria I used spiced apple cider from Trader Joe’s. I also just used regular brandy and it worked out great. I also got the iced tea/lemonda and apple cider from Trader Joe’s as well.

Food: I made 2 different types of salad. A greek salad (I also made 1 tray without feta) and autumn panzanella salad. Then I made butternut squash quinoa. For the “main” part we did baked ziti and paninis. I ordered the paninis from La Bottega in town. They cut them into 4 pieces, so I ordered 15 sandwiches (10 chicken, mozzarella & roasted red pepper and 5 veggie with goat chese.) For the baked ziti, we did 1 tray gluten free with brown rice pasta and 1 tray with no cheese. We did have *some* leftover food, but not a lot. People came hungry!

Dessert: Oh, dessert. I LOVE dessert. I also love having a huge assortment. First, I made chip-wiches. My mother in law graciously made a ton of chocolate chip cookies. I used them to assemble vanilla and chocolate chip-wiches. These went FAST. I made about 35. My sister put together an edible arrangements, which looked AMAZING. I helped a teeny, tiny bit. It took maybe 2-3 hours.  (We followed that link, pretty much to the T.)

My Uncle Tom made a crumb cake and my cousin’s girlfriend made delicious white chocolate cranberry cookies. Then for the main event, Danny’s cousin Lauren made us a beautiful “Apple of Our Eye” cake. It was delicious AND gorgeous!  For Liv’s cake, I used this recipe from Caroline. She didn’t go face first or cake crazy but she still enjoyed herself!

Favors: For favors, I made apple cinnamon granola, apple butter and m&m’s. The apple butter was super easy in the crockpot. It took all weekend to do because I made two batches, but it was worth it!

…and that’s all folks! I can’t believe my little girl is going to turn 1 in 5 days! It was so fun to celebrate with people who love her. It was a big party and clearly was more for Danny and myself than her because she won’t remember it. She will have the pictures to look back on though and I hope she can see (and feel) how much she’s loved. Liv was a little overwhelmed at all the love, but she was a good sport. She went to sleep at like 6:45 that night because she was just exhausted!

Hope you enjoyed reading these posts. I had so much fun planning this, if you have any questions let me know!

Tagged as: apple of our eye, dessert, drinks, favors, first birthday, Food, party