Eli's 1st Birthday Party

One of our best friends' little boy, Eli, celebrated his 1st birthday last Saturday.  It was a really hot day, so they had a giant blowup water slide outside.  Emma was too little to get up the slide by herself, but she had lots of fun splashing in the water and Jared helped her go down the slide a few times.

It has been a long time since I've made a "big" cake, but I really wanted to do something special for them.  There is no way I would have been able to do it without Jared's help!  He entertained Emma while I worked on it.  There wasn't really a theme to the party, so they told me to do whatever I felt like doing (Jared was sure to tell them that it was a My Little Pony cake :)).  I've been seeing tons of these giant cupcake cakes and I have always thought they were so cute.  They actually even make a giant cupcake pan now, but I was not going to spend a lot of $$$ on a pan I'll only use once.  Anyway, this is how it turned out.  The cake was vanilla buttermilk and there were matching chocolate cupcakes to go with it.  I may not have the time to make lots of cakes anymore, but it is fun when I can spend a little time being creative with cake :)

This boy can put down some cake!  He demolished the entire 5" smash cake in no time.  There was absolutely none left!!!  Only crumbs on his tray!  I was so surprised!  Emma hardly touched her smash cake.