Caroline’s Birthday Nessie Top

I can’t believe that yesterday my baby girl hit 14 months old! She is getting more and more brave about standing up without holding on to anything but so far she hasn’t started trying to walk yet. Our boys both walked at 15 months. Maybe that will be the magic number for Caroline, too. It’s high time I do the post I’ve been wanting to do about her 1st Birthday party.

We had Caroline’s party at our house with family and a few good friends. It was a hot air balloon themed party and I wanted to make hot air balloon sugar cookies. I was googling around for ideas and I stumbled upon a Creativebug class about how to decorate using royal icing. I had always wanted to learn this so I signed up for the two week free trial and took this Wilton class. (Fun fact: I used to work for Wilton in their corporate office before I became a full time stay at home mom. I took a couple of their cake decorating classes but this was my first time with cookies.)

I thought the class was great. The recipe included in the class was so good! Much cookie dough was ingested in the process of making these cookies. I had fun doing the flooding technique and embellishing all of the cookies. I liked the class so much that I ended up signing up for a monthly membership to Creativebug. So far I have only managed to watch one other class in it’s entirety but I’ve started a few and really want to get back to them. Carolyn Friedlander’s Needle Turn Applique class is at the top of my list.

I made loads of cake for the party. For the main cake I used this Ultimate Sampler Cake recipe from Sprinkle Bakes and this whipped vanilla buttercream frosting from Annie’s Eats.  I used this technique to frost the cake, which is so easy and looks really cool when it’s done. I glued some of the sugar cookies on the side of the cake with extra frosting to decorate it. This cake was gigantic so I ended up leaving off the top layer of mousse. I didn’t think the slices would fit on the plates if I made it full size! The cake tasted amazing and was a big hit.

I also made Caroline her own smash cake using a Funfetti box mix (5 cake layers from scratch was enough for me!) I made the leftovers into cupcakes. My dad accused me of going overboard with the sweets but we only had a couple of cupcakes leftover at the end of the party so I’d say it worked out pretty well. Caroline had fun with her smash cake and made an amazing mess with it. I am not sure she really ate much of the cake but she sure had fun playing with it and throwing it everywhere.

I wanted to sew her something to wear on her birthday, but it was so cold in the middle of February that I decided to just make her a special birthday shirt instead of some sort of frilly dress. I used the Nessie top pattern again, which has quickly become my favorite thing to make her. I love the swingy shape of it. It doesn’t cling to her baby tummy like most of her store bought t-shirts do.

I used this sweet knit from Amy Sinibaldi’s Paperie collection for Art Gallery Fabrics. I’ve been a long time reader of Amy’s blog and I think her fabric line is just adorable. I love how this simple t-shirt turned out and it has been worn over and over again. I am looking forward to making her some short sleeved Nessies once the weather gets warm.

Are any of you bakers as well as being into sewing? Have you tried any Creativebug classses (or other online crafty type classes?) I am amazed at the awesome content that is out there for learning new skills– I just need more time to learn it all!

~Teri