A First Birthday Celebration

For Felix’s first birthday, I wanted to be festive but not go overboard - this party really is more for the parents than the baby! For a theme I went with ‘That’s Not My Monkey’ (his favorite book). I made little monkey face cupcakes, put out his stuffed animals, got some crepe paper and party hats and called it a day. Well, I also made a gray and white felt birthday banner that we can use year after year. With a clean house, fresh flowers and a table full of food it looked great! 

Some of you might have seen my failed cake I tried to make on Friday afternoon. I didn’t like the way the frosting looked and tried to salvage it by scraping it off to re-ice later. Unfortunately it just crumbled in my hands. Thank goodness I had all of Saturday to try again!  The little monkey faces are made from mashmellow fondant I made earlier in the week and the icing is just cream cheese, butter and sugar! I had two circular cookie cutters and used the end of a dog bone shape to make the eye area, then piped on blackish icing for the eyes, nose and mouth.  I used to love icing and decorating cakes when I was a kid so I had a lot of fun making these! They tasted amazing too (we just used a box mix for the actual cake!!)