A Giraffe Party

Last weekend we celebrated Miles 1st Birthday with a giraffe themed birthday party!  We waited until all of our friends got back from vacation and I spent a few weeks planning, organizing, and working on all the details for his shindig!  I ALMOST decided not to have a party because I just felt like there was so much going on and I didn't want to physically over do myself or run the risk of Brooklyn coming early, but then I realized for the rest of our lives we will always compete with Christmas for Miles birthday, traveling, and potentially another birthday close by so I sucked it up and went after it!  I really wanted to make sure Miles got the same 1st birthday experience that we did for Gavin 3 years ago and I'm so glad we did it!

Miles greeted his guests when they came to the door.  This is his friend Aden who was born in Saudi a week after him- his mom and dad are teachers at the school Gavin goes to and our apart of our weekly meeting group!  Love the McGuire Family!  

We couldn't have a party without singing Happy Birthday.  We've done this twice before so Miles knew what was coming and pretty excited about.  Gavin was also VERY excited about the smash cake (he decorated it himself- see below for more details).

 

Here's a video of us singing Happy Birthday to Miles and him eating his cake!  He devoured it! (don't forget to scroll down and pause my music)

Happy Birthday sweet boy!  Mommy, Daddy, and Gavin LOVE YOU!!

Some of our friends at the party and their little ones!

Miles loved opening his presents and was semi into it.  We helped rip off the paper for him to see what was inside.. that seemed to hold his attention faster and better!  Aden helped too!

 

As always a favorite gift came from Uncle Micah and Aunt Steph... Miles got his very own riding toy and he loved it!!  It's just his size and allows him to have something to ride on when Gavin is riding his big boy toys!

 

 Miles birthday party was a lot of fun and I'm so glad we were able to celebrate his first birthday with our close friends here in Saudi!  This past year has gone by so fast and we can't believe our little man is already 1.  We're looking forward to watching him grow into his personality and are anxious for him to become a big brother!  

I was going to make this a separate post but figured I'd just group it all together.  

If you're still reading the blog... here's all the details about the party (if you care about this kind a stuff).  

I picked the giraffe theme because for the past year Miles has gotten multiple giraffe animals or toys so it just seemed to fit.  I wanted needed his cake to be semi easy, but also wanted it to be a cutsey little boy cake and not some elaborate, over the top cake so I went with the number 1 look and turned it into a giraffe.  Gavin actually decorated Miles smash cake and was VERY, VERY proud of himself.  It was a sweet moment when Gavin brought the cake to Miles when it was time to sing Happy Birthday to him.  If anyone came over to our house the day before the party, Gavin would go get the smash cake out of the fridge and show it off.  Too cute!  I picked up some giraffe stuff while we were in the states and ordered a few things from etsy to top off the party decorations.  I got the idea for a first year photo timeline to showcase at the party from a blog and had giraffe themed monthly tags made and then went through all my pictures of Miles from each month and picked out my favorite one or the one I felt represented that month the best and made the banner.  It really turned out cute and everyone loved seeing how much Miles had changed over the year.  

 

 

The birthday boy sporting his birthday shirt!  I had this shirt made for Miles to have a keepsake for years to come and ordered it from this etsy store.  

Something I'm so glad that I did and didn't think about it until the last minute... was to have some sort of sign in for us to remember who celebrated Miles first birthday with us.  For Gavin's party, I had been scrap booking his first year and just made a sign in sheet for his book.  For Miles, I'm making a digital photo book of his first year, but I'm not finished with it (my original goal was to have his book printed and leave blank pages in the back so people could sign it, but I really wanted to have Miles first birthday in the book, so I knew I needed something else that we would always keep.  Shel Silverstein is a great author and we have 4 of his other books and read them occasionally.  When I saw this giraffe book online, I knew this book would be something we would keep for years and years and it hopefully would not get lost!  When people came to the party they wrote Miles a sweet note and this will be something we'll cherish for years to come, not to mention remember our time in Saudi and the friends we were surrounded with!



Weeks leading up to the party I searched and brainstormed cute party favors to give to our guests, but felt like things were either too expensive or too corny to give.  I refused to spend money on "giraffe stuff" for adults since there were very few little kids to give favors to, so I bit the bullet and made sugar cookies.  These aren't my favorite things to do-- they are SOO time consuming and I never feel like they come out good... I've always said I'd much rather make a 3 tiered cake then decorate 2 dozen iced sugar cookies, but I went with a simple design, skyped my sister in law for help (who by the way, decorates AMAZING sugar cookies), and went to town decorating them while Brooks and I watched a movie.  Simple and Fun!  I think they were a hit with everyone and I'm just glad I had something to give to everyone!

We did a little baking....

We have been enjoying the past few days leading up to Christmas and spent some time baking in the kitchen and decorating with sweets!  

My mom brought one of those Gingerbread House Kits with her from the states to be a fun little project for Gavin to get to do this Christmas season.  Brooks took a few days off of work and he decided he wanted to be the one to make the house with Gavin.  They set up shop on the kitchen table and went to town.  Gavin loved it!  I read online a few weeks ago a really GOOD TIP when making Gingerbread houses--- use a hot glue gun to glue the actual house together instead of icing so that it will be more sturdy to decorate and place candies on without falling or breaking apart.  The idea worked.  Decorating the house was simple and since we usually don't eat the gingerbread cookie part anyways, it didn't affect anything.  The candy is delicious enough and Gavin had no problem eating three times as many pieces of candy as what he was putting on the house.  What a fun memory they made!   Gavin was REALLY proud of his gingerbread house and took his decorating job seriously!  We're starting to see aspects of an engineer's mind in his everyday routines.     

The morning that my parents were coming in, I couldn't sleep out of pure excitement and was up at the crack of dawn.  I decided to do a little baking and went semi overboard.  I baked a cake, made two dozen sugar cookies, and when Gavin woke up, we decided to try a recipe I had been meaning to fix for quite some time.

Now, first let me say, I love baking and enjoy decorating even more.  I used a new cookie recipe that I found here and followed ALL the tips that many of the people contributed on the site and really liked the way the cookies turned out.  A few days later, the cookies still needed to be decorated and this is where the fun began.  I tried making the icing (which is NOT buttercream icing that I'm use to) and ran into many issues.  I was calling my sister in law for help back home, who makes and decorates GORGEOUS cookies and has even started selling them, and 5 hours later all I had to show was maybe 15 cookies.  The cookies tasted great and I was pleased with the way they did turn out, but geez--- I could have decorated a 3 tier cake in less time.  Brooks kept encouraging me throughout the morning that I had nothing else to be doing and I should just enjoy decorating the cookies, so that's what I tried to do.

Speaking of cake..... one of our traditions that we've started is to make a birthday cake for Jesus since that is the real reason we celebrate Christmas.  I waited until Christmas day to decorate the cake and we had it as a dessert for dinner with some friends of ours who came over for gumbo that night!

I mentioned earlier I had found a recipe for Baked Sugar Doughnuts that I had been wanting to make for breakfast with Gavin and hadn't done it until this week.

Here's what you need:
- 1 can of biscuits (it says to use country style, but I didn't after the way our snowmen turned out last week)
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 3 tbs melted butter

Here's what you do:
- roll out the biscuits to 2 1/2 inches (I didn't necessarily "roll" rather I squashed them until they were semi flat).... don't let my roller in the picture fool you-- or the flour.  I put them both out, but didn't really need them
- use some kind of small round cutter to punch a hole out through the middle and set the center pieces aside
- submerge the biscuits and "holes" into the butter then dip into the sugar
- place onto a greased cookie sheet and bake in the oven for 12 minutes at 375 degrees.

*** I made sure to watch the biscuits cooking in the oven because I really didn't want these to burn.  I will say, the butter and sugar that coats the biscuits made it hard for me to determine if the biscuits were undercooked so I checked them by poking a toothpick through the middle.  They came out great and tasted delicious!  Next time, I'm going to cook them for even less time so they have a softer center, and not as hard of a "shell".  Did I mention that Gavin helped me with this recipe?  He literally did all the coating and dipping!  I didn't do any of it, unless there were parts of the biscuit that still needed some sugar!  Try it out, you may be surprised how much you like it-- although, we don't exactly have the option to get up early in the am and go to the local donut shop so this met that need.  I'm also scared of our deep fryer, even though last Christmas I got one that has a basket in it and everything... so that's my next goal is to make donuts the "real" way!  Enjoy!

Cookies..nuff' said

My friend Christa, who you can visit at Bruises and Bows, has found a passion for  making, baking, and decorating cookies and she is VERY good at it.  I decided to try out her techniques and I must say, I think I will stick to cakes!  

We were having a Welcome Home Brooks/Super Bowl Party at our house Sunday night with friends who have had more than enough of my cakes so I decided to try cookies for the party instead.   I enjoyed trying something new, and was proud of the end result, however, unless I practice more often on this, I don't think this will be a weekly or monthly occurrence for me.  I emailed Christa the day after making my cookies and told her that if anyone contacts me asking if I can/will make cookies for them, I will gladly send her the business.  It's not that I didn't like doing it, I just don't feel that I'm good at it.  I also know that it didn't help that I did ALL of it in one day, and literally spent the ENTIRE day making and decorating them-- as well as making the icing.  When I make cakes, I do a little bit each day so that the work load doesn't overwhelm me.  I think I got overwhelmed with the cookies. I decided instead of making the cookies a "dessert" at the party, that they would be favors for everyone to take home.  They also served as the centerpieces on the tables, during the party (mom- are you proud of me for that idea?).

Around 10am I made the sugar cookie dough

I rolled out the dough and began cutting.

I caught someone taking pieces of the dough every once in a while...

Oven ready... it took me forever to get the height just right...

More cookie styles going in the oven...

Letting them cool...

Decorate with icing..

footballs 

(for anyone who didn't choose a team to root for)

Jerseys..

(incase anyone was interested in the Colts)

Fleur de lis for the Saints of course!!

(I totally copied Christa's Saints cookies... see hers here. 

The final products.  I even wrapped them up in clear baggies with cute bows!