Esther's First Birthday!

Hard for us to believe, but our little Esther is one year old! We tend to keep baby/toddler Birthdays fairly low-key, just getting together with family, but I do like to try for fun cakes. Feeling somewhat uninspired, I turned to her older siblings for cake/theme ideas...

I asked the kids, "What does Esther like?"

Emily giggled and said, "Peas!"

We all laughed, because it is very true --- One of Esther's favorite foods is frozen peas (and she eats them while they are still frozen). We joked around a bit about decorating the top of a cake with frozen peas and decided it would be icky when they melted. (Eeeeew!) I had been expecting the girls to say "princeses" or "fairies" (because that's what they like), so I combined some ideas and decided to make a "Princess and the Pea" cake!

I wanted to use fondant (smooth playdough-like frosting) to make blankets, but I'd only used the store-bought kind and it tastes nasty. Fortunately I found a recipe on the web for making fondant at home from melted marshmallows (and lots of powdered sugar). The project was still kind of tricky, since this is only the 3rd time I've worked with fondant, but I think it turned out ok:
On the weekend, we got together with family over at the Boschis, since Esther shares her Birthday with Uncle Dennis (as well as my sister Lisa and Matt's dad!). Katie made a really yummy chocolate cake for Dennis.

We had all had a good time. I think Esther quite enjoyed destroying (her part of) the cake and ripping into presents!

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart!