my lil' cupcake

Last Saturday we celebrated Luciana June's 1st birthday! We had a cupcake themed party for our little cupcake, and had some of my family, and two other families that we are close with over for brunch. We decorated the house with lots of fun decorations, and had lots of....you guessed it, cupcakes! I even made a giant cupcake cake with this mold. It was a labor of love for sure. I had seen online how you could make a cupcake liner for the giant cupcake out of melted chocolate, so I was determined to try it. Let's just say, the fourth time was a charm. After the first three attempts, the chocolate kept breaking as I would try and pry it out of the mold. Thankfully, my mom started up a conversation with an employee at the craft store who suggested putting the mold in the freezer before trying to wipe the melted chocolate on the mold. That did it, the mold was so cold once I put the chocolate on, it started setting right away. I put it in the fridge for an hour, and voila......it popped right out!!! I was so happy, I did a little dance around the house. Anyway, on with the rest of the party.

Our brunch menu was:
Southwestern Breakfast Casserole
Easy French Toast Casserole
Mini Frittatas with Bacon and Cheese
Hashbrowns O'Brian
Banana Bread
Pineapple, oranges, and strawberries
Orange juice and coffee

Birthday Girl eating her brunch

Kids grubbin'

Here are some of the decorations:

The banner I made with the help of the Cricut cutter.

the party hats

the party table complete with a time capsule for Luci to open on her 18th birthday (I've done these for Emilio and Gabriela as well....so special to have notes from important people in their lives and little trinkets from their first year).

cupcake lipgloss party favors for the girls, boys got soccer keychains instead.

cotton candy cupcake with a rock ring

too much sugar, learned a lesson with this one.

After brunch we had the kids decorate paper cupcakes with paper frosting and sequin sprinkles to add to their party hat (found the pattern here for the cone hat, and the cupcake on one of the Cricut cartridges). The kids looked fabulous in their hats.

Cousin Eloisa started crying, and that upset Luci and she started crying too. Oh well, made for a funny picture.

Gabi & Emma

my nephew, Marco

We had Luci open her gifts, she was very pleased with the wrapping paper, tissue and bows. She liked her new book, toy, and pretty dress, and she loved her new Bitty Baby from Nonno and Nana!



We then sang Happy Birthday and let Luci June try her first cupcake!!! She was into the sprinkles at first, and then decided to stuff the whole cupcake in her mouth. So darn cute.

Is that for me?

so tasty!

finger licking good

Happy Birthday to our beautiful girl, Luciana June!